The new Blake Lively shark-attack movie The Shallows was formerly titled In the Deep, but a second shark attack feature titled In the Deep is set for release later this summer. If you’re wondering what the premise of this movie might be, the poster tells you everything. That’s what I love about it.
A movie poster can serve many purposes, and one of them is being a sales pitch. This poster, along with its succinct, efficient tagline, lets you know all you need to know about the movie. Here’s the official plot synopsis, nonetheless, in case you think there may be a swerve:
Two sisters on vacation are trapped in a shark observation cage at the bottom of the ocean. with oxygen running low and great whites circling, they have less than an hour of air left to figure out how to get to the surface.
Nope, no swerve. What you see is what you’re going to get. Now, will that be any good? Tough to say.
That scenario seems like it would be difficult to sustain for an entire movie. The very similar Open Water resorted to random scenes of people partying on land to help stretch its runtime. The also similar Frozen (no, not that one) gave its characters a bit more space to work in, and nonetheless started to get tiresome by the end of its 90-minute runtime. And the aforementioned The Shallows gives its character even more space to maneuver and play MacGyver within while also relying on backstory to pad the time. In short, an entire movie of “locked in a cage surrounded by sharks” is an interesting pitch, but it’s difficult to execute for an hour and a half.
All of that said, I still love the simplicity of this poster. Visually, it’s not artistic or particularly arresting, but it tells you what you need to know about this movie. Great whites. People stuck in a cage underwater. What do you need, a road map?
In the Deep is currently scheduled for theatrical release on August 2nd.
