Day 7 - The Shallows - October Horror Movie Challenge

THE SHALLOWS (2016)

It's okay...no sharks come here...

(There will be major spoilers so skip if you don't want to be spoiled)

Nancy is a medical student from Texas who is on her way to surf a secret beach that her mom surfed at when she was pregnant with Nancy. The significance is that in the distance there's an island that looks like a pregnant woman lying down. Nancy's mom passed away recently which caused Nancy to drop out of medical school and go traveling. With the help of a local she finds this secret beach and begins to surf.

She meets two other surfers who are surprised to see an American there but they surf with her and eventually leave her as she wants to get in one more wave. Unfortunately on her last wave she finds the dead body of a whale and while trying to get away from it, she is knocked off her board by a shark and bitten. To survive, Nancy climbs on top of the dead whale. But the shark is relentless and soon she has to swim for her life to a bunch of rocks that appear during a certain tide.

Once on the rock she attempts to close up her bites and stop the bleeding. Nancy takes in her situation and comes to the sickening realization that she is so close to shore but not close enough, and as the shark begins to circle her she has to fight for her life to escape.

Alright...so what did I love about this movie?

• I thought the story line was great. Not too complex on the backstory. Nancy is likeable and you root for her quickly.
• The shark reveal is great. For the first half of the movie it's just this shadow powerhouse gliding through the water and then during one scene when a surfer sees Nancy and heads towards her, the sharks leaps out of the water and snatches him up. After that you start to see the shark more and more. The CGI was pretty great actually, pretty believable. I mean, obviously you know they didn't train a real shark to swim around and attack Blake Lively but as far as a fake shark goes, it's believable. I didn't feel pulled out of the terror because of its effects.
• Steven Seagull is the real MVP and hero of this story. 
• The goodbye message that Nancy made on the go pro helmet camera was pretty emotional and well done.
• I LOVED the aspect of the counting down clock. The watch was basically counting down until the rock island would disappear into the water which made you feel tense the whole way through. And at one point Nancy timed how long it took the shark to get from the whale body to the rocks and used that time to grab the helmet and the camera. That was super tense watching 32 seconds count down while Nancy swims for her life.
• The ending was really great - the killing of the shark and the fighting non-stop for her life.

What I didn't love?

• Not too much actually. The drunk guy scene was a little ridiculous to me. Why on earth would a drunk guy steal a backpack only to put it down and then swim into the ocean to steal a surf board? That part was sort of annoying and felt out of place.

Overall?

This is a pretty solid, great film. It's survival horror at its best. Blake Lively delivers one hell of a performance considering she's basically the only character, and she goes through a tone of physical and mentally draining scenarios. In fact, the end scene where Nancy is fighting with the shark and smashes her nose on the buoy and it starts bleeding - that really happened. Blake smashed her nose and started bleeding but kept with the shot and they kept it in the film.

It's a beautifully directed film with some gorgeous open water shots and under water shots which were astounding to me.

I had a tone of fun watching it and would recommend it for sure.

Alright, we've come to the end of week one with our 2016 theme and a cross over to the upcoming few movies which are water themed. Because it's my list and I wanted a water theme. This week has been one of my worst personally in my real life and I feel mentally drained. My face is still in a lot of pain and I know for a fact I would not survive a shark attack right now, which does not bode well for the upcoming beach vacation I have planned. But it's our thanksgiving weekend here in Canada so I have the next three days to unwind and hopefully get better all while watching horror films.

8/10

Stay Spooky!