The Shallows - Yeah, not that deep (but not that bad, either)

Woman versus flippin' massive shark?  Who's going to win?  Well, 'The Shallows' goes some way to answer that question (and Blake Lively as the women in question is really going to need a 'bigger boat').  She plays a young woman who goes on a personal pilgrimage to an isolated beach where her (now deceased) mother went to just before she fell pregnant.  Blake indulges in a spot of surfing before finding herself trapped on a rock a few hundred yards away from the shore with a 'fin' swimming round and round her position.

And that's basically that.  What follows is an entire hour and a half of her trying to find a way off a rock.  Yeah, it's a pretty simple premise and, although it does drag in some places, it's actually a perfectly watchable way of killing time.  Being the only human on screen for much of the run-time Blake has to carry the film and she does that well enough.  There are a few other characters who pop up here and there, but I don't think you'll be too surprised to find what happens to them!

The location is great and the film could almost be used as a tourist video for the area (assuming you weren't bothered about being eating by a huge, angry fish), plus there's plenty of epic surfing shots.  I'm sure I could find out on the internet whether Blake actually did all of them herself, or whether there was CGI trickery involved somewhere.  Either way, they're really cool and totally convincing.  And, while we're on the subject of special effects, I should mention the shark.  We don't see much of it (besides the obligatory fin) for much of the movie, leaving its 'reveal' to the final act.  And, I was a little disappointed.  We're many decades away from 'Jaws' and yet creating a convincing shark hasn't really moved on that much.

I can see a lot of the other reviews have marked 'The Shallows' a lot higher than I have.  I can see how it might be enjoyed more than I did.  I didn't hate it.  I just felt that a story about a woman on a rock could have been trimmed down to a more 'TV episode' length rather than an entire movie.  But, I don't regret watching it, however I doubt I'll bother watching it again, simply because it's simple story means you can quite clearly remember all you need to for quite some time without feeling the need for a re-watch.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights