Get Out Of The Water

There is a cut from the dolly-zoom reaction shot of Brody to a shot of a group of children staring at the red stained water. A football - one of the defining symbols of US culture - has been dropped by one of the boys and it circles in the bloody maelstrom created by the attack. This small detail suggests what the panic on the Fourth of July scene will later make explicit: that it is the American way of life which is under threat from the monster. The terrified children are positioned much closer to the scene of the attack than in earlier shots, where Alex was further out, but sometimes continuity has to be sacrificed for dramatic purposes.

The camera cuts back to the beach where a couple are seen walking down to the water and pointing. Brody races past them in the foreground, but stops at the water's edge from where he shouts commands like a basketball coach at the court's sideline. The other adults, unaware of what has actually happened, run past him into the sea. Brody moves crabwise along the beach, shouting and gesticulating and then there is a cutaway shot to Mrs Kintner - partially obscured by the legs of running adults - as she raises herself up from her towel. There follows a series of cuts that alternate the point of view from the beach and the water as parents rescue their children, including a shot of Ellen Brody looking back nervously over her shoulder as she guides son Michael to the safety of the shore. Another cutaway shot shows Sean sitting by his ruined sandcastle, calling for his brother to get out of the water. There's a final shot of a young boy being literally dragged from the sea and then we are on the beach again as the last few bathers run up the sand past Brody. The music that accompanies this scene of panic builds up a frantic rhythm and then stutters to an end.

In the aftermath we see Mrs Kintner moving through the crowd calling her son's name. When she reaches the surf she makes a full 360 degree turn and then another half turn, a physical representation of her own sense of disorientation. Placing a hand on the crown of her head to prevent the wind from blowing off her yellow sunhat, she walks up the beach towards the camera, a look of desperation on her face.
 

There is then a cut to a shot of the torn remains of Alex's yellow raft washed up in the bloodied surf. It's not clear that Mrs Kintner sees this detail. The last shot of her shows her with her sight line directed out to the ocean and not at her feet. Furthermore, the framing of the final shot (with the waves on the left of the screen and the beach on the right) would not match her point of view. The image - rather like the dog's abandoned stick floating on the water - is a potent one, and provides a bloody punctuation mark to what is one of the film's most carefully constructed scenes.