You should watch this film, but you can walk in twenty minutes late for an even better experience, unless of course you dig endless shots of a bikini lady surfing in slow mo.

For a survival thriller film, there’s plenty of action and drama in the movie. If you like watching Blake Lively on screen, enjoy doing that for 86 minutes straight. Her perfectly toned body is an added perk. 

The Shallows fails to invent new things for itself in the third act. It becomes predictable, falling on easy survival movie devices like recording on a video camera, or the fact that Nancy, being a medical student, is able to tend to her wounds. But it is a well-crafted film that engages for the most of its 1.5 hours of running time.

For its part, The Shallows’ antagonist is an efficient CGI-created shark, not scary by itself but, like any horror film, what it’s capable of. In this case, its ability to rip a human in half, which it does in one gory instance. But the film is not just about a shark attack, it’s about fighting till the end no matter what and — clichéd as it sounds — overcoming the odds.