The Shallows

What attracted me to this movie was the movie poster (the underwater shot of the protagonist’s legs dangling from a surfboard). What was coming for her, lurking below in the waters? A monster, a shark? I had to know. I was hooked!

The intro was sufficient to get the watcher hooked , after which the beginning was relatively slow paced as the attention to details was placed in both story and character development as we get to understand what brought the leading  character to the waters where she had her feet dangling from a surfboard. However, slow paced as the beginning was, it was cushioned with wonderful aerial shots of the beautiful flora, beaches and merging currents.

 The movie is similar to Jaws, so that says it all, but what set it apart are the heroine and her determination to live against all odds. Despite the relatively low budget or so I think, the movie was shot almost entirely on one location and there were only about six characters in the movie but the watcher would not even have noticed this as he or she is taken from one tense moment to the other. 

This was a captivating thriller in every sense of the word and the director did a fantastic job using the beautiful colors of the location to provide stunning visuals. There were lots of underwater camera shots which added to the powerful visuals and the suspense as you get to see the protagonist’s struggles .This was further heightened by the excellent sound editing that captured even the agitated breathing of our heroine.

The movie in summary is about a young female doctor  who sets out for a remote beach to indulge in her hobby (surfing) and to relieve her heartache having recently lost her mom. Once there, had a terrible encounter with a great white… .

This is a movie I would recommend to anybody: young, old, nerdy, macho, etc. Well…, so long as you don’t mind a little blood as a shark feasts… .