I was curious to see this film when I saw the first preview. I enjoy suspenseful films and this one looked promising. I was not disappointed. As this film is a recent release and is still in theatres I will stick to basic details but there may be some spoilers.
The movie follows Nancy (played by Blake Lively) as she is surfing at a "secret" beach that her mother visited years earlier when she was pregnant with Nancy. Along the way to the "secret" beach she meets a middle aged man named Carlos (played by Oscar Jaenada). He in fact is the one who takes her to the secret beach. He explains that he lives nearby so he was doing out of kindness to her. He offers to return later to take her back to her hotel but she refuses. With some reluctance Carlos drives off in his truck.
After Nancy goes out to surf, she meets two nice young men. Together they all have a good time surfing for awhile. Nancy goes in to rest and we find out more backstory about her. Nancy goes back out to catch one more wave. While Nancy is catching one last wave, she is viciously attacked by a great white. Thus begins the very well done suspenseful tale of survival that is the rest of the film. I will not tell you how it ends because it would spoil the movie. If you aren't interested in seeing the picture in the first place, then I don't know what to tell you.
A spoiler that I will say is that the shark is a CGI shark. If you didn't gather that from the preview and if you didn't come across comments that Blake Lively herself made in an interview in which she specifically stated that the shark is CGI then I apologize for spoiling that for you.
This is a movie that you will have to suspend disbelief and just go with. If that doesn't work for you then I'm not sure that this film is suitable. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with being unable to suspend disbelief. I have encountered that problem myself in other pictures but for me it is important to know sooner than later if I have to suspend disbelief or not. But I digress.
Blake Lively was excellent as Nancy. She was believable and sincere. She also appears to have done quite a lot of the actual surfing/swimming in this picture which I think is cool. Nancy goes through realistic times of fighting for survival with lulls of despair and fear that made me care about her. When she was fighting I was cheering her on and when she was afraid I was encouraging her to keep trying.
The film was unexpectedly beautiful. The cinematography was gorgeous. I felt like I was there with Nancy as she was surfing and swimming or with one of the other characters when they were running. The filmmakers did an excellent job of bringing the film to life. The writing was very good and it all made sense.
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