Movie Review: 47 Meters Down

47 Meters Down ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Johannes Roberts.

Written by: Johannes Roberts & Ernest Riera.

Starring: Mandy Moore (Lisa), Claire Holt (Kate), Chris Johnson (Javier), Yani Gellman (Louis), Santiago Segura (Benjamin), Matthew Modine (Captain Taylor).

 

There are certain types of horror film that I am hard wired to respond to – and it doesn’t really matter how good or bad the films are, they will still scare me. Home invasion films are one such horror film for me – and another is shark films. It doesn’t matter how silly a film about sharks is, they will never NOT scare me – probably because I watched Jaws at far too young an age, and have never really recovered. Other than the Sharknado series (which I haven’t seen any of, because I have never really responded to either “so bad it’s good” films, or films that are specifically designed to be “cult” items on a massive scale) – I will always watch a shark film, and they will always be effective. I just don’t always feel good about myself after having seen them.

 

47 Meters Down is a cheapy shark movie – it was apparently just a week away from going direct to DVD a year ago, before another studio bought it to release it theatrically – a gambit that worked, considering the film has grossed $47 million in North America, and certainly doesn’t look it cost anything close to that. It does have two likable leads – Mandy Moore and Claire Holt – who carry the movie. And for the first hour, the film really does work quite well. You can tell the special effects budget isn’t high, because there are not a lot of shark effects in the film – but the film doesn’t need them. Once it establishes that there are shark in the water, you are on edge because you never know when they are going to show up – and even if the moments they do show up are essentially “BOO!” horror moments, they’re still effective ones. Plus, because the film cannot rely on sharks alone to scare you, much of that first hour is actually quietly effective at using darkness, and other visual tricks to ratchet up the tension. I don’t know a lot about scuba diving, but for a while, it really does seem like the movie is trying its best to be realistic and believable. And then comes the ending – which basically throws everything good about the movie right out the window.

 

The backstory here is pretty simple – two sisters – stick-in-the-mud Lisa (Mandy Moore) whose husband has just left her for being “too boring” and adventuresome Kate (Claire Holt), who is always travelling the world and having fun (I don’t need to tell you which one is the brunette and which one is the blonde, do I?) are vacationing in Mexico – and meet a couple of good looking, charming locals. They convince the girls to join them the next day as they’re going to go on a friend’s boat, get into a shark cage, and see the great whites in the area. They assure the girls it’s perfectly safe – which, of course, it is not. The whole setup seems sketchy, but the girls go anyway – only to have the wench on the cage break, and the girls plunge down to 47 Meters Below the surface. They cannot just swim up because, of course, of all the sharks. Most of the movie has the pair of them having to figure out one problem after another to stay alive for long enough to be rescued.

 

47 Meters Down is pure B-movie, and I don’t say that as an insult. It’s just that you can tell the budget of the movie isn’t high – but it doesn’t need to me. Moore and Holt are playing architypes more than characters, but they do it well. The scares work, the direction by Johannes Roberts is effective, and the whole thing is humming along just fine. The ending of the movie is stupid – and actually, doubly so, because I didn’t really like the 20 minutes leading up to the twist, which was insultingly stupid.

 

A bad ending can ruin a movie – or at least leave a bad taste in your mouth – and that’s what it did here. There are still moments that scared me – everything involving a shark coming out of unexpected places, etc. – worked like gangbusters. Yet, you don’t want to feel bad about liking a B- shark movie like this, and the ending makes that impossible.