The Shallows
Short description
Nancy Adams, a young surfer, travels to a secluded beach to ride the waves alone. What begins as an ordinary session turns into a fight for survival when a great white shark attacks her, forcing her to take refuge on a small rock in the water. From there, the shore lies only about two hundred yards away, but the shark keeps circling the waters between her and safety. With no one else around, Nancy must rely on her own wits and endurance to find a way back.
The film is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, the seventh of the thirteen features he has directed to date, following Run All Night and preceding The Commuter. Anthony Jaswinski wrote the screenplay, and Lynn Harris and Matti Leshem produced. Blake Lively plays Nancy, with Óscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen, Janelle Bailey, Sedona Legge and Pablo Calva in supporting roles. Production was split among Australia, Spain and the United States.
Made for a budget of seventeen million dollars, the film grossed about a hundred and nineteen million worldwide. On IMDb, viewers rate it 6.3 out of 10 from roughly 153,000 votes, while TMDB users give it 6.4 out of 10 from more than 5,400 votes. A critics' score of 6.5 out of 10 from 219 reviews places professional assessments slightly above the audience averages.
What's left behind the scenes
- Filming took place partly off the Gold Coast in Australia and partly in a large swimming pool.
- Scott Anderson oversaw the art department. As he later recounted, "...Haume and visual effects producer Diana Ibañez did a huge amount of preparatory work. Haume made numerous notes, and Diana and I had many conversations about sharks." Thus, the director was able to identify from the vast amount of information the moments and nuances on which the creation of the shark's image would later be focused.
- This is the second film in Blake Lively’s career where she has played the lead role. The first was Lee Toland Krieger’s romantic comedy “The Age of Adaline” (2015).
- Nancy names the seagull Steven – this is a joke referencing actor, producer, and screenwriter Steven Seagal (the English pronunciation of "seagull" and the actor's last name are the same).
- To create a believable image of the shark, Jaume Collet-Serra turned to the art department specialists. "It occurred to me that it should be a female. Female sharks are slightly larger than males. They have scars from mating on their sides. They are even visually scarier than males." The film features a female great white shark.
- While working on the shark's image, Scott Anderson focused on making it as realistic as possible. "That's just the nature of sharks. By pure chance, Nancy encroaches on this shark's territory and disrupts the established order of things," Anderson later said. "The shark strikes, and after that it only sees Nancy as food. It's nothing personal. A shark is a shark."
- In 2014, the film's script was included in the so-called "Blood List" of the best unrealized horror film scripts.
- At the end of the film, Nancy fires a «No 2 Mk. V» flare gun made by the British arms company «Webley & Scott».
- During the filming of the final scenes, Blake Lively hit her face on a buoy, causing her to have a nosebleed. Both the moment of impact and the blood on the actress's face were included in the final version of the film.
- The digital artists had to work hard to create a shark of such size. Visual effects specialist Scott Anderson instructed that it be a "huge shark, like a diesel truck, but possessing, despite all its incredible power, the grace inherent in German-made passenger cars." "Huge but graceful, every movement reveals power, even when the shark is simply swimming, and especially when it attacks a buoy or something else," Anderson said.
- Initially, the film was planned to be titled "In the Abyss".
- A boy finds a «GoPro» action camera on the beach, but doesn't notice the remains of a person who became one of the victims of a man-eating shark.
- For obvious reasons, the shark in the film is a product of computer technology. Great white sharks are considered an endangered species. They do not adapt well to captivity.
- Director Jaume Collet-Serra wanted to show a shark on screen that would send chills down the audience's spines. "I needed the shark to be the central character for half the film," he said. "At first, show it with hints and glimpses, and only then present it as a kind of natural disaster, as something inevitable. I decided that Nancy needed to see the shark in all its glory, so the audience could see it too."
- Louis Leterrier was originally supposed to direct the film, but he left the project due to creative differences with the studio and the film's reduced budget.
- At the beginning of the film, Nancy is asked if she's from California. She replies that no, she's from Texas. Blake Lively, the actress who played the role, was born in California.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
