Movie Review: 47 Meters Down: Uncaged

47 Meters Down: Uncaged ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Johannes Roberts.

Written by: Ernest Riera and Johannes Roberts.

Starring: Sophie Nélisse (Mia), Corinne Foxx (Sasha), Brianne Tju (Alexa), Sistine Rose Stallone (Nicole), John Corbett (Grant), Nia Long (Jennifer), Brec Bassinger (Catherine), Davi Santos (Ben), Khylin Rhambo (Carl).

 

Let’s be honest – there really wasn’t a need to make a sequel to the fairly forgettable, surprise late summer hit 47 Meters Down from 2017. And there really wasn’t a need to essentially do a remake of Neil Marshall’s wonderful The Descent (2005) with blind sharks in place of whatever the hell those creatures were in that movie. And yet, here we are with 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (to quote The Simpsons re: Naked Lunch – I can think of two things wrong with that title – the first being that this time, there is no evidence to suggest that they are 47 Meters Down at all, and uncaged doesn’t really describe what happens to the sharks – but I digress). But I will say this – as some who Jaws at too young an age, and have been scared of sharks ever since, it is pretty much impossible to make a shark movie that doesn’t scare me to some degree, and director Johannes Roberts again sets himself the difficult task of making a movie almost entirely underwater. He pulls it off – somewhat. The film is superficially scary and gives you those satisfying shark moments you crave. It doesn’t really do very much else though. The characters are paper thin – if that – and they say nothing of interest the entire movie. The film even requires one character to behave in a way that comes completely out of left field in order to once again strand the people once we thought they were okay. The film has probably one or two (or three) too many false endings. But if all you want to see is some shark chomping action, then this will do until something better comes along.

 

This time, the action is set in Mexico – and focuses on four high school girls (strangely enough, none of whom are Mexican, although they all live there). Stepsisters Mia (Sophie Nélisse, who you may remember from The Book Thief) and Sasha (Corinne Foxx) don’t really get along – Mia is an outcast, mocked by everyone at school, and Sasha is cool and popular. Still, they aren’t thrilled when Mia’s dad Grant (John Corbett) bails on their weekend plans – and gets them tickets to a glass bottom boat ride instead. Long story short, Grant is a diver, and his team need to prepare for some archeologists who will be arriving to explore an underwater Mayan ruin – and Sasha’s best friends – Alexa (Brianne Tju) and Nicole (Sistine Rose Stallone) save the pair from their boring day, by taking them to a secret spot, where Grant and his men (one of whom has a crush on Alexa, and shown her around) left their diving gear for those visiting archeologists. Wouldn’t it be cool to see those ruins – they’ll just head down for a few minutes, one lap around the first cave and out again. Of course that isn’t what happens. That’s because there is a giant Great White Shark down there – one descended, apparently, from others who have been trapped in those ruins for generations, and evolved to survive in the pitch black, meaning they cannot see (not that sharks see much anyone) – and Grant and co. have now set them free. So the girls have to keep on swimming, keep finding another way to go, to avoid being shark meat.

 

If director Johannes Roberts learned anything from the first film, which he also directed, it was the need for more characters in the film in order to increase the body count of the sharks. The first film was essentially the pair of sisters (played by Mandy Moore and Claire Holte) – and this time he gives them a couple of friends, and then Grant and his two employees. Now, you can increase the body count, and satisfy that bloodlust the audience is feeling. And that is essentially what he does. He doles out the death in classic slasher movie ways – one at a time. Normally, he likes the attacks to come quickly, out of nowhere, to better surprise you (and one key death makes it clear that he has seen Deep Blue Sea – and loved Samuel L. Jackson in that). There is one death scene that he allows to play out a little longer – slowly building the suspense as the poor unsuspecting victim just goes about their business. But mostly, they want it to be quick, bloody and over quickly.

 

Roberts is a good director. The film he made between the two 47 Meters Down movies was The Strangers: Prey at Night – a horror movie I thoroughly enjoyed, and has one absolutely masterful sequence in it. There is nothing that approaches that level in either of the two shark movies. They are low budget, B-movies meant to deliver some cheap scares, and a good time at the movies. This one succeeds probably a little better than the previous one – that one felt at times like it was treading water waiting to get to an ending that was insultingly stupid. This film never does that – it moves quickly from one place to the next, never pausing, hoping you won’t notice that none of it makes much sense. It then gives you not one, but at least two false ending – endings where most movies would call it a day, and this one just keeps on going. You have to kind of admire that. Still, for an example of how this type of movie can work like gangbusters, one needs only to remember last month’s wonderful B-movie Crawl – with all those gators. This movie doesn’t come close to that level of B-movie brilliance.