The Shallows (2016)
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A medical student must survive a terrifying shark attack while stranded on a secluded beach.
The story
Shortly after her mother's death, medical student Nancy Adams travels to a secluded beach in Mexico to visit a site her mother frequented. While surfing alone, she is attacked by a large shark and knocked into the reef. She manages to reach a nearby isolated rock but is left stranded as locals depart. Nancy must use her wits and determination to survive the shark's repeated attacks while dealing with her injuries and the approaching tide.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
Following her mother's death from cancer, medical student Nancy Adams travels to a secluded beach in Mexico. While surfing, she is attacked by a great white shark, biting her leg and leaving her stranded on a small rock. She uses her surfboard leash as a tourniquet and jewelry as stitches. After locals leave her, she is joined by a wounded gull she names Steven Seagull. A drunken man who finds her is killed by the shark, and two other surfers are also killed. Nancy retrieves a GoPro from a fallen helmet and records messages for her family. She notices a hook in the shark's mouth and eventually swims to a buoy, narrowly avoiding the shark by swimming through stinging jellyfish. She uses a flare gun to set a whale carcass on fire, causing the shark to attack a buoy. Nancy straps herself to a chain, is pulled underwater, and the shark is impaled on rebar. A boy named Miguel finds the GoPro, and his father, Carlos, finds and revives Nancy. One year later, a now-graduated doctor Nancy goes surfing in Texas with her sister.
- First release year
- 2016
- Runtime (minutes)
- 86
- Production countries
- United States
- Original languages
- English
- Directors
- Jaume Collet-Serra
- Writers
- Anthony Jaswinski · writer
- Cast and characters
- Blake Lively · Nancy Adams
- Genres
- survival horror; adventure; sports horror
- Themes
- survival; grief; determination
- Tone and mood
- tense; minimalist; athletic
- Setting
- A secluded beach in Mexico
- Premise and plot tags
- shark attack; survival; beach; medical student
- Reception
- The film received generally positive reviews and was a box office success, praised for its performance and craft, though some critics found the screenplay and score lacking.
- Reported review scores
- Rotten Tomatoes · score: 78% · review count: 220; Metacritic · score: 59 · scale: 100 · review count: 35; CinemaScore · score: B+ · scale: A+ to F
- Production trivia
- The film was originally intended to be shot on the Gulf Coast of the United States but was denied a permit.; The shark was created entirely through computer-generated imagery.; The seagull character was a mix of CGI and a puppet.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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