Staci Layne Wilson’s The Shallows review expounds on the beach-based summer thriller starring the lovely Blake Lively as a surfer at odds with a killer great white, armed with nothing but her wits.

Generally, I love shark-attack movies – Jaws is of course my favorite, and so when this flick was touted as “Jaws for a new generation” I was intrigued. Ever since Shark Week kicked off way back in 1988 the genre’s popularity has grown, proving I’m not alone in my fandom.

Whether shark addicts will take to The Shallows like ducks to water remains to be seen, but I for one was disappointed.

The rather silly story follows Nancy, a medical student who’s recently lost her mother to cancer. She leaves her dad and her little sister home in Galveston, Texas, to go on a spiritual quest for the mysterious beach in Mexico that her mom loved. Nancy miraculously finds the unnamed patch of sand and surf, strips down to her string bikini, grabs her board, and catches a wave.

Then a super-sized shark catches her – she’s badly bitten, but eventually manages to get to an outcropping of offshore rocks just breaking the surface of the water. With low tide, she’s somewhat safe… but what happens if she’s not rescued by the time high tide comes along? She’s not too far from the beach, but just far enough to tempt the circling shark. She gets the attention of a few beach-combers and surfers… all of whom suffer gory PG-13 CGI fates.

Isolated and injured, Nancy starts making a plan – and she says so out loud in dippy dialogue such as “The buoy is 30 yards away, which means I have about 32 seconds to get there before the shark completes his circle…” This sort of thing would have been much more effective showing her looking at the buoy, glancing over at the shark, then setting the timer on her watch and diving in. Instead, every single thought is spelled out as if we the audience are not bright enough to follow what’s going on without implicit instructions.

Sharknado, Jersey Shore Shark Attack, and the Mega Shark Vs. franchise are all big biz on cable and maybe, just maybe, The Shallows would have worked as a TV movie. For instance, there are a lot of gimmicks which would have been better on the small screen (smart-phone imagery juxtaposed with the current action, for example, is not very cinematic). And it amazes me that the wave-riding sequences in a big-budget 2016 film can’t even begin to compete with the seminal surfing documentary Endless Summer… made 50 years ago in 1966!

Don’t worry – if The Shallows doesn’t shiver your timbers there’s always In The Deep starring Mandy Moore, coming out this August.

1 Hour 27 Minutes

Rated PG13

Get times and tickets at Fandango.com

THE SHALLOWS Review — Suspense Runs Deep

THE SHALLOWS Review — Suspense Runs Deep

By Staci Layne Wilson

@StaciWilson