The sea gull, like Nancy’s Mom was, is wounded with quite probably no hope for survival against its present circumstances. Initially, you think of the sea gull as being a scavenger, waiting for her to die, and while this may be true on a purely literal interpretation of the film, thematically, I believe that the sea gull actually represents Nancy’s mother. When she is initially attacked by the shark, Nancy finds herself trapped on a cluster of rocks with a wounded sea gull she light-heartedly names Steven. Nancy however, refuses, opting to go surfing instead.Ī final interesting thing to note about the movie is the character of Steven Seagull. Helping people makes her happy, her father tells her.
Over a video call with her younger sister and her father, Nancy is implored by her dad/society to come back home and return to med school. “I want you to know Dad, that I’m going to fight, just like Mom did.” (paraphrased)įor our protagonist Nancy, her father represents society, and the conflict is her running off to Mexico instead of dealing with her grief. As Nancy says into the lens of a helmet cam near the end of the film: Our protagonist Nancy experiences increasingly terrifying encounters with the monstrous shark, narrowly surviving through each one, eventually growing and learning that as human beings we should fight, no matter what adversity comes our way and regardless of the outcome we might experience. Nancy becomes a nomad of sorts, travelling around the world trying to reconcile the ferocity of her mothers’ fight against her disease with the fact that in the end, determination got her nowhere.Īnother aspect of the bildungsroman genre that features in The Shallows is that there will tend to be a major conflict between the main character and society, which by the story’s end, will be reconciled in some way.
In The Shallows Nancy has all but dropped out of medical school after the death of her mother from cancer. From there, the character’s goal becomes emotional maturity which is achieved gradually through several difficulties. Usually, at the beginning of a bildungsroman story, the protagonist will experience an emotional loss, forcing them out on their journey. Don’t let the weird Latin sounding name fool you, it pretty much just means a story where a protagonist experiences something that causes them to grow up. In the writing craft, we would call this kind of narrative a bildungsroman story. However, you could also be accurate in saying that The Shallows is a coming of age film. The tropes are all there – an impossibly dangerous monster, the lone female character struggling for her life, little to no weapons etc. You cannot escape the inherent survival horror nature of the story. It would be accurate to say that The Shallows is a survival horror film. However, what really held the movie up above others of the genre, was its focus of characterization and the progression of Nancy from indecisive student, dancing around unsure of whether she’s dropping out or not, to a strong, courageous woman who knows her purpose. Blake Lively’s performance was awesome, and in combination with the writing, lead me to wonder exactly what genre of story I was actually seeing play out in front of me.ĭon’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of pulp-horror shark attack action in the film to keep viewers into that sort of thing entertained. Thinking I was going in to see another B-grade shark attack movie, I actually found myself being pleasantly surprised by both the acting and the story.
It follows the horrifying story of a young medical student named Nancy who arrives at the unnamed beach her mother visited while pregnant with her, and ends up stranded atop a coral reef 200 yards from the shore, while a gigantic great white stalks her from the water. The Shallows is an American film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra ( Orphan, Run All Night), written by Anthony Jaswinski ( Vanishing On 7 th Street) and starring Blake Lively ( Gossip Girl). We decided to jump on the bandwagon and head long with our flatmates to the cinema and check out the latest Shark attack movie The Shallows. Once again, my partner and I found ourselves on a rainy New Zealand Sunday with not much to do.
0 kommentar(er)
