If you had told me that a Blake Lively movie would be better than the latest Pixar film, I’d have punched you straight in the nose. But you know what? You would have been right.
What Works: “The Shallows” makes great use of its vibrant, ocean-blue setting. [Whereas “Finding Dory” is mostly set in a fish dungeon.] There’s something so visually compelling about a bright blue ocean and near-golden sand being terrorized by a nasty gray eating machine. This film’s shark is the second great villainous monster of the year after Sher Khan in “The Jungle Book,” but he has to be menacing with no lines, though it’s almost expressive enough not to need them. The film’s shark and atmosphere of suspense is about as well-crafted as you could possibly hope for in a movie that didn’t have the budget of a, say…”Independence Day 2.”
Still, the most noteable thing may be that Blake Lively has finally found a vehicle that is exactly right for her. [I bet her agent did cartwheels when they read the script.] A lot of people like to hate on Lively, but—to me—she’s no worse an actress than her husband Ryan Reynolds is an actor, and his best performance was a similarly single-performance movie “Buried.” Where he was literally the only thing on screen in a tight coffin for most of the movie, Blake is aided by action and setting. Still, it’s finally showing that Blake is somewhere between a more adventurous Jennifer Aniston and a more relatable Bond girl. She doesn’t really need to be Kate Winslett to nail it in horror, action, sci-fi, and romantic comedy movies and become a movie star people want to watch.
What Doesn’t: There are a few obviously fake CGI-sequences like a near-laughable swim through a jellyfish minefield and character development can always be a big stronger…
What I Would Have Done Differently: …But let’s not kid ourselves about what kind of movie this is, and for Summer spectacle this is flat-out beating rivals that cost 10-times as much.
I am going to see this movie after reading this review. Loved it!