The Shallows (2016)

A medical student (Blake Lively) makes a pilgrimage to a secluded out of the way beach in Mexico (with Australia standing in) in honor of her recently deceased mother. But while surfing, she is attacked by a shark and finds herself stranded on a piece of rock as the shark waits ... and waits. The film starts off promisingly and the director Jaumet Collet-Serra keeps the tension simmering for awhile. But alas, he can't sustain the tension or momentum that he began. It's essentially a one woman show and while Blake Lively is very good, the long (and I mean long) stretches of her suffering on the rock just aren't very compelling. A good thriller shouldn't have so much down time. Some pretty good moments but overall ... a disappointment. Marco Beltrami's flabby synth score only shows how much JAWS owed to John Williams classic score. I hated the sappy "one year later" coda. With Oscar Jaenada and Brett Cullen.