Headscratchers / The Shallows

• Aren't the chains on a buoy just to keep it anchored? Don't they rely on ballast to keep them upright?
  • Generally, yes. Having trouble seeing the Headscratcher here...
    • So then the ballast should've kept the buoy upright when the chains were broken and even if it was tipped it would rock back.
    • True, but it received extensive damage during the shark's assault.
    • Nope, only the platform was damaged, the hull (where the ballast is located) was still intact. That buoy should not be tipping 90° and staying there.
• What happened to the drunken man who was bitten in half? His corpse isn't seen in any sweeping shots of the beach.
  • He probably got washed away by either waves or the tides.
  • Carlos found his corpse on the beach, just before he rescued Nancy.
    • I also thought that might be him, but was also confused because he seemed a lot more intact than the last time we saw him.
    • Judging by the color of his hair and clothing (and by the fact that his body is in one piece), it's the blonde surfer.
• One also has to wonder why the Shark is so aggressive torwards Nancy. Most predatory animals go for the weak or injured prey over a healthy animal because it can't fight back. One of the reasons shark attacks are rarely lethal against humans is because humans tend to kick the shark in a nervous area on the body (the nose, the gills, ect.). The shark, thinking it has a seal in its mouth, gets shocked by this and swims away to find prey that won't fight back. This makes sense at the beginning of the movie, where Nancy's injury makes her ideal prey (can't swim very fast, can't fight back very well, easy to track because she's bleeding), however, as time goes on, the shark takes almost as much of a beating as Nancy does. Despite this, the shark is willing to leap of the water to overturn the buoy to get to Nancy. Exceptions to this rule do occur, but those tend to be limited to when the predator in question is either starving or they think their prey will eventually weaken. However, the shark had killed 3 people and (presumably) a humpback whale, and the shark had been stabbed, stung multiple times, and even set on fire in its pursuit of Nancy, who had shown no signs of slowing. What's stopping the shark from simply ignoring Nancy and just continuing to eat the whale, who won't fight back?
  • Upon doing further research, the type of attack in the movie, referred to as the "bump-and-bite" attack, isn't uncommon for sharks, however, it still runs into the same problem. The bump-and-bite attack is usually done to see if the creature the shark is after is prey. Typically, upon interacting with the possible prey, the creature would then struggle and panic. Again, at the beginning of the movie, Nancy is acting like prey, with her (understandably) frantic movements and splashing. However, as previously mentioned, by the end of the movie, she had proven she was more then capable of fighting back, which again leads to the question of why the shark didn't just give up and look for easier food.
  • Doyalist answer: Rule of Scary. Watsonian answer: This particular specimen of Great White was insane, driven by past experiences (as evidenced by the spear in its mouth) to hate humans and kill them whenever possible. While one should hesitate to apply the term "revenge" to Great White Sharks for a number of reasons, this particular shark is clearly intended to be an abnormal example of the species.
  • It is also possibly a case of Nancy being near the whale that the shark was feeding on which was in the shark’s territory, and it may have been trying to chase out a perceived invader to its territory.
• In the beginning Nancy wanted to know the name and location of the beach but nobody would tell her, why then didn’t she use a map app that uses gps on her phone in order to find her location and find the name of the beach?
  • If memory serves, the beach was a "secret beach," the kind of remote, out-of-the-way spot you can only find if you already knew about it. Nancy knew about it because her mom had been there once, and she knew enough to get close enough to find some locals willing to take her out. Either the name is a closely-guarded local secret, or it simply doesn't have a name: the locals just call it "the beach," and it's not widely-enough known elsewhere to have been named. So her map app wouldn't provide any information beyond "you're near the coast in this general area."
• Other parts of this wiki claim this shark is out for revenge, but didn’t the hook (which could be attached to a discarded line) confine it to the area? In one scene the shark is shown unable to follow Nancy due to the hook. Wouldn't that mean it would have to take every hunting opportunity it could because it can’t forage?
  • Well, Great Whites don't really forage at all, they hunt as their first means. The hook wasn't restraining the shark at all; the only time it interferes with the pursuit of Nancy is when the hook gets caught on the structure of the buoy. The hook isn't connected to a chain or anything that leashes the shark to this specific area. The hook is simply evidence that this particular shark has had violent encounters with humans in the past. What precisely that means — whether the shark is actually out for revenge against humans or simply aware of them as potential threats to be removed — is pretty much left to the viewer.