Blake Lively stars in ‘The Shallows’.
Cinema
Ciara Galvin
I’M a fan of Blake Lively. She was great in the hit US show ‘Gossip Girl’ and she’s a red carpet darling alongside actor hubby Ryan Reynolds.
She’s the type of girl you’d imagine would be sound enough if you met her out. But when it comes to holding up a feature-length movie by herself? That’s where my girl crush on her ends.
She was great in 2010’s ‘The Town’ and was competent in 2015’s ‘The Age of Adaline’, but going pretty much solo for most of the 87-minute film, ‘The Shallows’, she just doesn’t cut it.
The shark-attack thriller sees Lively play the role of Nancy, a med student that has escaped to paradise to chill out and catch some waves. For a while everything seems to be going swimmingly, but a great white shark has other ideas.
Nancy gets stranded 200 yards from shore and must outwit the predator to survivor. Three lads get consumed while she’s out on the rock, and things don’t look great for her.
That’s the extent of the plot of the whole film – David versus Goliath – and the outcome is pretty predicable all the way along.
Maybe it’s nostalgia, but there hasn’t been a good panic-inducing, tension-filled shark film since ‘Jaws’. There’s nothing new here in terms of concept or plot, other than the choice of writer Anthony Jaswinski to develop a ‘Phone Booth meets Castaway’-type movie.
Although I’m a fan of neither Phone Booth nor Castaway films, I still think Colin Farrell and Tom Hanks did a pretty good job of carrying them single handedly.
Lively isn’t a good enough actor to keep an audience on the edge of their seats, so you’re left there predicting the storyline and waiting for it to play out.
Jaswinski failed in his role of developing Nancy’s character, and she comes across as just plain bland.
‘The Shallows’ isn’t great, but I’d take it any day over ‘Sharknado’. And at least it’s only 87 minutes.
Rating: 4 out of 10
Review: The Shallows
