The Shallows - 🍪

I always hate man vs. monster kind of movie so I didn’t know what’s in my mind when I decided to watch this one. I honestly thought this would be an action rescue-team movie… for no reason. I was so wrong.

The sea is shallow, and so do everything else. The movie follows Nancy (Blake Lively), a med student that gets herself in a secret paradise somewhere in Mexico. It is surfing she’s up to, but there is also a sense of sentimental value because she’s just lost her much beloved Mom by cancer. It is her Mom’s beach, she said. She is clearly missing her Mom, who has been her number one motivation to enter medical school and everything else. At this point, I push myself to understand her reckless decision to go somewhere so secluded alone.

For some unexplained reasons afterwards, she and another two surfers there aren’t aware of a bleeding, huge, and dead whale in the sea surface up until she is alone in the water. She is then attacked by what I believe is the whale-attacker (a great white shark at that), and the other two guys in the shore don’t catch a single view; or sound. If you think you can handle the complete absurd situation, it really doesn’t get any better as the story goes. It may be not just another day at the beach for Nancy, but it clearly is just another shark-themed movie for us that is not better than anything on the market.

Well, much for my unnecessary animals pleader tendency, I think it is important to note that shark don’t hunt humans for no reason. It is even more common for humans to hunt sharks rather than the opposite. Fact wise, for every human killed by shark, humans kill approximately two million sharks for their meat, internal organs, fin, and skin. And this is only a movie, which can definitely get a dramatization treatment, but I honestly hope it could be smarter on that.

I think I can still right some wrongs made in this movie if they wrap it nicely, because they started with Nancy’s breakdown over her life, which can be a great element for a closure. Is she learning about dedication from the dedicated shark that is unrealistically passionate about hunting her down? Is she finally realized that she loves helping people (she doesn’t really help anyone, though), and chooses to continue her medical degree? What is the connection between that and her near death experience? We don’t know—and the movie is shallow like that.

If I were you, I’d choose another movie to watch.