The Shallows

I recently watched the film, The Shallows, which came out just this summer.  At first, I pictured this film as being just another cheesy film about a shark attack trying to compare to the great Jaws movie.  Instead it was something completely different than all of the other shark movies that I have watched throughout my life.  It depicted a medical student, Nancy Adams (Blake Lively), as a young woman trying to escape the grief of the loss of her mother by going to a secluded island to surf.  This depiction of paradise for Nancy takes a turn for the worst and ends up being a horror of a place for her.  This all occurs when she decides to take one last surf by herself and ends up getting bitten by a great white shark.  She escapes the shark and proceeds to swim to the nearest rock, which is 200 yards offshore.  After using whatever she had on her, which ended up being her jewelry and shirt, to heal her injury, she attempted to find a way to escape the shark.  The interesting part to me in the film that caught my attention was a bird with a broken wing that stood beside her throughout the whole time that she was being hunted by the shark.  This to me signified a greater meaning in the movie as I saw the bird as symbol of hope for Nancy to fight for her life and get off the rock so that she could reunite with her family back home.  After all of the struggle, Nancy escapes the shark and ends up being able to safely get back home to see her family.  The amazing part of the film was when at the end you see her and her family going back to that same beach to surf again without fear of any kind.  Overall, the movie was a well-thought out movie with a deeper meaning that is brought to the surface.