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A savagely undervalued thriller that transcended tropes chomps down on streaming

This one will take a bite out of you.

The Shallows Blake Lively
Image via Columbia Pictures

In the modern days of cinematic horror, the creature feature sub-genre has forced filmmakers to face the conundrum of attempting to create a decent movie with both effects that are pleasing to the eye and a narrative that makes sense. As a result, these movies tend to fit more into the sister category of thriller, although with some tender attention and elbow grease, even a shark-attack thriller can find success amongst a plethora of other films in the crowded catalog — which was exactly the case for 2016’s The Shallows.

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Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, the House of Wax directed sought out to generate a worthy shark-attack contender — which undoubtedly helped with Green Lantern star Blake Lively getting cast in the horror project. In the Collet-Serra vehicle, Lively stars as Nancy Adams — a medical student dealing with recent grief who travels to a remote beach in Mexico. Unbeknownst to her, a vengeful great white shark is patrolling the waters, which forces Adams to utilize her knowledge to try and escape.

The Shallows horror 2016
Image via Columbia Pictures

With Lively in the driver seat and the effective capitalization on a low-budget gem, The Shallows garnered more praise than it did criticism — especially with critics on Rotten Tomatoes, where the movie harbors a 78 percent Certified Fresh score. In its defense, the overall critics’ consensus declared that the horror movie boasted a premise that “transcended tropes” with regard to the typical creature-feature flavor.

Thrill-seeking Netflix subscribers echoed these sentiments, too, with many movie-lovers clearing their schedules to soak up the survival horror’s breathtaking sequences. As per FlixPatrol, The Shallows has become one of the platform’s most-watched films in several countries around the world — proving itself to be an acclaimed creature feature with plenty of bite.