The Shallows (film)

Shortly after the death of her mother due to cancer, medical student Nancy Adams travels to a secluded beach in Mexico, the same beach her mother visited while she was pregnant with her. Carlos, a friendly local resident, gives Nancy a ride and drops her off at the beach, while a friend of hers who came along with her is staying back at a hotel after partying too much. Nancy joins two other locals and the three surf for several hours. Taking a break from surfing, Nancy video-chats with her younger sister Chloe. When she talks to her father in an emotional and strained conversation, it is revealed that her mother's death caused Nancy to consider dropping out of medical school.

While surfing one last time for the day, Nancy notices the carcass of a young humpback whale nearby. As she rides the last wave back to the beach, a large great white shark knocks her off her surfboard and bites her leg. Nancy climbs onto the whale carcass, but the shark rams it from underneath, forcing her to swim to an isolated rock. She uses her surfboard strap to slow the bleeding from her leg. Later she uses her jewelry to put rudimentary stitches in place to hold her torn flesh together. Nancy is left alone when the unaware locals leave the beach, and she spends the night on the rock with a wounded red-billed gull, which was also injured by the shark, and names him Steven Seagull. The next morning, a drunk local man on the beach steals Nancy's belongings. While wading out into the shallow water to steal Nancy's surfboard, however, he is killed by the shark. Several hours later, the two locals Nancy had surfed with the day before return. They get into the water before Nancy can warn them away, and are also killed by the shark.

One of the local surfers was wearing a GoPro camera on his helmet. When he was attacked by the shark, his helmet had come off and floated to the surface. Nancy later sees the helmet floating in the water. After some struggle, she is able to retrieve it and notices in the footage of the attack, the shark has a large hook stuck in its mouth after a possible encounter with fishermen. Nancy uses the GoPro to leave messages for her sister and father as well as information about the shark attack and her location.

With high tide approaching, Nancy realizes the rock will be submerged soon. After sending Steven Seagull toward shore on a piece of the surfboard, and timing the shark's circles from the whale carcass to the rock, Nancy swims to a nearby buoy, narrowly avoiding the shark by swimming through a group of jellyfish, which sting both the shark and her. Nancy finds a flare gun on the buoy. She shoots one flare to draw the attention of a faraway cargo ship, but the ship has already turned away and does not see her. She then fires another flare at the shark, setting the oil from the whale carcass alight and angering it, but otherwise having no effect. The shark then ferociously attacks the buoy and rips out the chains securing it to the ocean bed. Nancy straps herself to the last remaining chain and as it is ripped from the buoy, she is pulled down to the ocean floor, pursued by the shark. At the last moment, Nancy pulls out of the dive, and the shark impales itself on some rebar from the buoy's anchor.

Later, a boy named Miguel (from the opening of the film at the beach) finds the action camera and informs his father, then revealed to be Carlos. Carlos finds Nancy floating close to shore and revives her. Nancy briefly sees a hallucination of her mother. As she looks around the beach, she sees that Steven Seagull has made it to the shore. One year later, a healed Nancy (now a doctor) and her sister Chloe go surfing in Galveston, Texas, as their father tells Nancy that her mother would have been proud.

• Blake Lively as Nancy Adams
  • Ava Dean as Young Nancy Adams
• Óscar Jaenada as Carlos
• Brett Cullen as Dad
• Sedona Legge as Chloe Adams
• Pablo Calva as Boy, Carlos' son
• Janelle Bailey as Mom
  • Chelsea Moody as Young Mom
• Sully Seagull as Sully 'Steven' Seagull
• Angelo Josue Lozano Corzo as Bi-lingual Surfer
• Joseph Salas as Portuguese speaking Surfer
• Diego Espejel as Intoxicated Man

Initially, Louis Leterrier was to direct, though he dropped out in June 2015,[4][5] leading to Jaume Collet-Serra being considered for the job.[6] Collet-Serra viewed the movie as one about survival and noted "this isn't a creature movie".[7] Likewise from the very beginning Collet-Serra decided not to place an emphasis on gore.[7] Blake Lively joined the cast in August 2015.[8] Lively was partly inspired by her husband, Ryan Reynolds', work in the similarly minimalist film Buried, stating "that was one of the reasons why I wanted to take on this movie so much, because I know how tough that was for him and how rewarding it was."[9]

For the seagull character of Steven Seagull, the usage of both CGI and a puppet was considered based on the belief that it would be inordinately hard to train such a bird to act. This "horrified" both producers, Matti Leshem and Lynn Harris, who wanted to work with an actual animal. While scouting for location in Australia, Lively was able to feed a group of seagulls, at which point it was realized that it would be possible to use them for production.[10] The initial script featured Lively talking to the bird much more, and likewise, scenes featuring such an interaction were shot. However, in the end, Collet-Serra decided on a less-is-more approach,[11] noting that "...we didn't want her to be like Snow White talking to animals. When you see her predicament, you get it. You don't need her to explain everything to a seagull!"[12]

The Shallows was originally supposed to be released on June 29, 2016, but to avoid The Purge: Election Year and their second weekend being on the holiday of July 4, the film was instead released on Friday, June 24, 2016, by Columbia Pictures.[19]

• List of killer shark films
• Jaws
• Survival film, about the film genre, with a list of related films

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• Official website
• The Shallows at IMDb