The Shallows | What to Watch

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, along comes Blake Lively's lone American surfer and a great white shark

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, along comes Blake Lively's lone American surfer and a great white shark.

Lively has travelled to a remote Mexican cove, location of her late mother's favourite beach, little realising that it has become the shark's feeding ground.

Their first bloody encounter leaves her stranded 200 yards from the beach - and high tide is coming. Her attacker is between her and the shore but, as Lively's gutsy performance makes clear, her heroine is incredibly resilient and resourceful, improvising a needle and suture to patch up her wounds (handily, she's a medical student) and thinking up canny strategies to outwit her foe.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra turns her battle for survival into heart-stoppingly tense cinema in an adventure that is as sleek and scary as the ocean's most fearsome predator.