47 Meters Down

Year: 2017
Genre: Horror
Directed: Johannes Roberts
Stars: Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Chris Johnson, Yani Gellman, Santiago Segura, Matthew Modine
Production: Tea Shop & Film Company

When I think of 47 Meters Down, my first thought doesn't automatically go to last year's The Shallows (2016) or, Open Water (2003) cult favorite shark movie Deep Blue Sea (1999). My mind actually wonders to of all things The Other Side of the Door (2016), a frightfully forgetful ghost story that served as my introduction to director Johannes Roberts's work. Despite taking place worlds apart, The Other Side of the Door and 47 Meters Down have a lot in common. Both take on a pulpy premise, arm it with only the essentials, make due with smaller casts, provide some competent visuals and shows narrative promise only after sleepwalking through the first fifteen minutes.

(yawn)

Unlike The Other Side of the Door, 47 Meters Down keeps the audience riveted for more than 50% of the run time, relying almost solely on tried and true cliches to carry the day. The setup is simple; a pair of sisters (Moore and Holt) go on a shark cage excursion while vacationing in Cancun. Once in the water, the cage snaps away from its hull line and plummets into the depths beneath.

Just by reading that description, don't you just want to see this movie? The early promise of its high concept feels almost embedded in the film's DNA. We have multiple time clocks, a series of unforeseen events and complications, an escalating and dire circumstance and at the center of it all are two actresses who, granted aren't exactly the stuff of stars but are more that spirited enough to keep our interest.

If only the movie tackled its limitations with the same gusto it does its advantages. by the mid-point, the movie begins to take on water in the form of repetitive visual cues that are largely contained to sneaking behind rocks and bobbing up and down to contact the boat via radio. While one can forgive the questionable decisions of characters who are scared, tired and in Moore's case untrained, their "I'm not going to leave you," banter revisits many of the same themes in the exposition. They do so without giving any real dimension and because they're both stuck in the cage, without any real tension either.

I just had the craziest dream...

And talk about a movie that fumbles on the 5-yard line. I won't spoil the last fifteen minutes lest to say its liable to take you out of the film's world in much the same way The Matrix Reloaded (2003) did. I know it seems necessary to squeeze in a twist ending in almost every movie nowadays no matter how unnatural but man they really killed the golden goose in this case.

Combined with a cheap look-and-feel, nuts-and-bots dialogue and truly uninspired visuals, 47 Meter Down is just not where it needs to be. Still it had early promise so my advice to you would be to watch the first half then imagine in your head how you'd get out of a similar situation. Hopefully you won't jump the shark like this movie did.

Final Grade: D-