47 Meters Down is yet another 'shark horror movie,' and I should be annoyed with them by now. But honestly, there's something strangely endearing about the optimism here, of people thinking they can still do better than Jaws after all these years without massively changing up the formula.
To be fair, this does offer a different take on a shark movie. In this one, they're trapped underwater in a shark cage and are running out of oxygen surrounded by bloodthirsty, serial-killer-ish sharks, each ready to devour them whole. But strangely, they barely even do too much with THAT concept. It's a weird waste of potential. "Here's an original idea," I can imagine these writers saying, "now, just fart out a script. I am gonna take a nap."
Director: Johannes Roberts
Starring: Mandy Moore, Claire Holt
Co-written with Michelle.
This starts off with our main characters Kate and Lisa, on vacation at a ritzy, gorgeous looking beach in Mexico. There are several pointless but nice-looking scenes that end very quickly, looking less like a horror movie and more like a travel agency's commercial. Or a hotel's commercial. Whatever it is, you know looking like a commercial is very much against what most horror movies should be about. Hint, guys – they're supposed to make you want to stay AWAY from places.
I guess we find out that Lisa's long-term boyfriend Stuart has just dumped her and that's at least partly why they're vacationing. They talk about how he got bored and left... I guess he had the attention span of a tiny baby. Did you try waving car keys in front of his face? Also, it's weird that they have all these short, pointless scenes and are just now dumping this on us. What prevented them from just opening with it? Maybe the contract for the cinematographer included 'must film footage that looks identical to a travel commercial in case this horror movie thing doesn't work out.'
Then they meet some guys late at night at a bar, partying and stuff, and the guys invite them to go shark diving the next day. As far as the movie shows, they barely exchange two words before agreeing to this. Later on, we see that Kate, the younger sister, is super adventurous and has a penchant for doing crazy stuff. I guess in this movie, that means she just agrees to whatever the weird guys in the bar invite her to do. Good thing she didn't talk to the OTHER guy at that bar who wanted her to play Russian Roulette. Or the third guy who was just a fucking rapist.
The next day they all go do exactly that, shark diving. There are a few scenes where the crew on the boat seems slightly suspicious and weird, like maybe they'll do something creepy and horror movie-ish. Nope. It's just a normal shark diving trip, with all the lack of regulations or rules that an off-the-beaten-path beach in Mexico promises... this movie just has such a lack of any imagination. It's barely even trying to tell a story. We were just waiting for something super creepy to happen, like right before the girls went under, one of the guys leans over and whispers that they've been stalking the girls for weeks. But nope. I guess that was too much to ask. Or, really, anything remotely interesting.
I'll throw the movie a bone here: it's pretty cool when they actually get underwater. It's a dark, isolated and gloomy setting. There isn't much else quite like it for horror. Most movies would wimp out and set a lot of it above the water, but this one, to what little credit I can give it, creates a definite mood by setting the entirety of the movie way deep down underwater.
Too bad they barely make use of it! There's very little in the way of scares. Most of this is just them talking in frantic tones about how to escape. There's a few scenes of very mild suspense that might make a nursing home grandma who's never seen a horror movie jump. Otherwise it's all a big old flatline. Like oh, really, they want to get out of the ocean? Tell us more, Shakespeare. Regale us with these mindblowing concepts.
They don't utilize the setting very well and there's maybe one scene where they go off and explore the darker parts of the ocean in any way. The sharks are bad at being serial killers and don't sneak up on them well or provide much tension either. Maybe they should've looked this up on WikiHow. Overall this is a limp tension-free slog much like the feeling of a deflated balloon.
They start running out of oxygen, though much later than I had thought. They get in touch with the douchebag who got them down there to begin with, who sends down some new tanks. The problem is, because they've been down there so long, they might start to hallucinate. Now, this was the point where I thought things might finally get cool and interesting. Here was an opportunity for the movie to truly show off its creativity and put in some badass, insane hallucinations under the fucking water...
Nope! That doesn't happen. Instead, Kate gets attacked by a shark and then Lisa manages to get free from the bars of the cage pinning her leg down and save Kate. Then the both of them ascend from the water on their own – which was really an option the whole time and I'm not sure why they didn't just try it even in spite of the danger...
...then it turns out all of THAT was all a hallucination and they WEREN'T saved! But don't worry, the national guard was coming down right at that time and saves them for really real.
Wow. That is some weak ass “horror.” You had the option to have fucking hallucinations under water and you did jack squat with it. This should have been a fucking freak circus like the climax of The Shining set underwater, with hallucinations used to their full effect and escalating until the characters lost their mind. I wanted to see the darkest recesses of their psychology. I wanted to see gore-streaked apparitions and creepy figures lurking in the shadows of the sea.
But nope. Nothing. There's no imagination here. This kind of stuff is the reason why nobody ever took horror seriously for years in the 2000s. All in all, I recommend just going diving in open water with sharks rather than watching this silly stuff. I'm gonna go watch Jaws again instead.
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