There's quite a bit of menace from the photography and at least the shark looks real as it terrorises the stranded "Nancy" (Blake Lively) in a small inlet a matter of a few hundred yards from the shore. Naturally, she's left all of her stuff on the beach so is completely incommunicado after a passing Great White decides it wants a snack. Luckily there are a few big rocks and even a chunky metal reef marker for her to shelter on as she prays that someone will come to her aide. Someone, that is, with sense enough to wonder what she is doing stuck on a rock and not just to get into the water, blithely and finally. Though I'm not sure just how physically possible the denouement is, I did really like those few seconds and to be fair, Lively does manage to convey a decent degree of desperation as the tenacious shark gets more and more peckish, angry and innovative. Can she survive? Well on that front the jeopardy level is precisely zero and the whole film is easily half an hour too long, but there are still some squeaky moments and it's worth a watch, if only to remind us just how vulnerable and out of our depth mankind is in a nature where our technology doesn't count.
