[6]

Blake Lively stars in this claustrophobic thriller about a woman trapped by a great white shark in a shallow ocean cove. Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, House of Wax) captures the beauty of the Australian surroundings (passing for Mexico in the movie) and gives us some cool surfboarding footage before the shark fin disrupts the peace. The Shallows is at its best when Collet-Serra is winding the tension — will Lively make it to the rocky island, and once the high tide comes, can she make it to the buoy? And look out for those sharp coral reefs and stinging jelly fish. Lively carries the film well, making the potentially sappy backstory about her dead mother more palatable. I was also happy that she gets to spend a good chunk of time with a wounded sea gull (and thank you for not killing the bird!) Things get pretty ‘Hollywood’ for the climax, and I’m no fan of the gratuitous use of social media throughout the first fifteen minutes of the movie. But overall, The Shallows is tense and entertaining. With music by Marco Beltrami.