Lets hope that having to sit through a bad shark movie
doesn’t become an annual tradition. Last
year’s “The Shallows” was dead on arrival and now we have “47 Meters Down,”
another tepid adventure that fails to deliver the thrills one would expect from
a feature focused on one of nature’s most efficient killing machines. Instead we get one red herring after another
where ocean-going predators are concerned, as well as a manipulative script
that goes to great lengths to extend this story far past its logical
conclusion.
Sisters Lisa and Kate (Mandy Moore & Claire Holt) have
taken a vacation to Mexico for distinctly different reasons. The former is
there in an effort to put a recent break-up behind her, while her younger
sibling is just seeking a thrill or two.
They, and the script by director Johannes Roberts and Ernest Riera,
waste little time in finding just that when they go out with a couple of local
hunks who convince them to go on a real adventure. They hook them up with American ex-pat
Captain Taylor (Matthew Modine), a rather mysterious guy who has a bucket of
bolts that’s held together by the copious amount of rust it has. Seems he has an ancient shark cage that he
lowers tourists in so they can get an up close look at the Great Whites that
cruise the area. The sisters will be
only five meters down in the water and their two new friends, the captain and
his first mate will be there to pull them out if they find themselves in any
danger.
What could possibly go wrong?
Credit Johannes Roberts for wasting little time as he
dispenses with our heroine’s backstories and gets them in the water within the
film’s first fifteen minutes. This sort
of narrative economy is commendable and helps raise expectations in the
audience, as surely the director must have some impressive things to show us if
he moves things along that quickly, right? That sense of anticipation is soon
scuttled as after the shark cage the ladies finds themselves plummets to the
titular depth, boredom sets in as they panic, discuss their relationship and
panic some more before coming up with a lamebrain plan to escape their would-be
watery grave.
The appearances of the sharks are far too infrequent to
create any real suspense and once they do glide by, we get nothing but a quick
glimpse or a blur, while their attacks might just as well have happened off
screen they’re so ineffectively filmed and happen so quickly. One thing Roberts does succeed in is
effectively capturing the immensity of the ocean, it’s overwhelming darkness
and the sense of isolation one experiences when adrift. With this, he manages to generate some true fear.
However, this simply isn’t enough, especially
when a cheap narrative device is used to “trick” the audience, a turn that’s
telegraphed early and often. In the end,
“47 Meters Down” proves to be a movie adrift, one that simply can’t sustain any
buoyancy thanks to it lack of innovation.
This article appears in Jun 22-28, 2017.
