First she’s got the wetsuit zipped, then she’s got it not-so-zipped, then she’s got one arm torn off like an Amazonian warrior etc. Kudos to Collet-Serra and his screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski for figuring out a way for Lively to undergo a series of costume changes, despite the storytelling hurdle of never returning to shore.
The remainder of the picture is of her figuring out how to survive when there’s a vicious person-shredder separating her from safety.Īfter the initial attack (in which cool blue turns to Argento red), Nancy spends most of her time strategising on a rock that just so happens to have a nice, scooped-out middle for her lie in and resemble a wounded Greek siren.
When two nice locals say adios for the night, she stays behind to catch a few more waves. But before the nasty beast shows its teeth, we get ample footage of Nancy on cloud nine, hanging 10, in this quiet cove. That’s needed because there’s something more treacherous than sick wipeouts or sharp coral in these waters: a giant, hungry shark. The almost-a-doctor bit means we’ll buy it when she tears at her wetsuit to create a tourniquet or uses her necklace as a suture. Home is Galveston, Texas, which means she can be both a heartland of ’Murica sweetheart as well as a demon on a surfboard. As if the film needs to fulfil some sort of government-mandated backstory requirement in order to register as a legal motion picture, Nancy’s touch-base with home informs us that she is a medical school dropout struggling with the recent death of her mother. “Mom’s beach?” Nancy’s little sister asks via a FaceTime chat, a cleverly shot but mercilessly short bit of exposition.