Predictably then, the cage’s tether to the boat eventually snaps and Kate and Lisa are left stranded 47 meters below the surface at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by sharks, with little-to-no communication lines and even less ways to defend themselves. Of course, Kate and Lisa are not those kind of characters and get in with very little resistance to any of the operation’s many sketchy details. So the girls embark on a trip into the middle of the ocean, on a boat captained by Matthew Modine’s Taylor, and get into a cage that’s rusted so red (it looks like Mater from the Cars franchise) that anyone with some semblance of common sense would avoid getting into it at any cost. Does this sound like a very selfish thing for someone to do to their sister, just so that they can go swimming with sharks? Well, it is, but it’s just one of many truly ridiculous bits of character motivation that drive the plot of 47 Meters Down.
So when the girls hear about a chance to go diving with great white sharks, Kate convinces Lisa it’s the perfect opportunity to prove her ex wrong by posting photos of the sharks swimming around them on social media. The film follows Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt), two sisters on vacation in South America together, after Lisa’s husband left her for being too boring. The sudden ominous music cue that accompanies it only further reinforces the fact that while 47 Meters Down may be many things, it will not be subtle, and it will most certainly not be a showcase of technical or visual prowess either. Fortunately, the film lets you know what it is before the opening credits are even done rolling when a character spills her glass of red wine into a hotel pool, and the camera does a zoom into the red liquid spreading throughout the blue water like, you know, blood would after a shark bite. To put it into perspective, ’47 Meters Down: Uncaged’ is a very average horror flick, and the scares are limited.I say all of this because it’s important to know what you’re getting into, and what you want from 47 Meters Down when you go to see it. But in this age of global warming and a waiting environmental catastrophe, one wonders if it isn’t actually the other way around, and that it is the sharks who are in danger from humans, bikini clad or otherwise. This is especially true of two half sisters, Mia (Sophie Nelisse) and Sasha (Corrine Foxx), who realise how much they really care for each other.īombarded as we are by disaster films on land, in the air, and on water, you would think that survival against the elements is the most important thing to worry about.
It is a cat and mouse game that goes on endlessly, and though the sharks are fearsome, their attacks get repetitive, and what you see is more of the same, without any twists in the tale.įemale bonding is a strong theme of the movie, and the girls look out for each other, taking risks to stay safe together. The horror begins, and the girls realise that it is a maze underneath, and the only way to avoid the attention of the sharks is to hide behind rocks, or get into crevices that the huge creatures cannot penetrate. So when the four girls – Mia, Sasha, Alexa and Nicole – all expert swimmers with taut bodies, arrive to see the gorgeous looking statues and artefacts, they are met by two of the men, who are suddenly devoured, right in front of them. Now, there are three men working underwater to prepare for a visit to the site by archeologists. This was centuries ago, during the Spanish invasions. However, logic has never been a prime motivator of Hollywood horror/disaster movies, and so here the story is that the sharks have swum through an inlet from the ocean and have now evolved to be blind, due to the darkness of the area they inhabit.Īpart from sightless sharks, these underwater caves contain an ancient Mayan City, to which the natives fled to escape the cruelty of the Conquistadors. This is the second edition of the original sleeper hit film, but in this version the girls are not lowered down in a cage to watch sharks, but dive down on their own at a lagoon that has caves underwater, and where there shouldn’t, according to reason, be any sharks.
There is a lesson here somewhere, but it is lost in ’47 Meters Down: Uncaged’.
As blood stains the water, do we see beauty eaten by the beast? Do we understand that sex is just an appetite? What is it about sharks and pretty girls in bikinis that are irresistible to an audience? Given the number of movies made with this combination, there must a Freudian element of joy in looking at an ace predator of the ocean taking large bites out of shapely women in swimsuits.
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