47 Meters Down ** (2017, Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Matthew Modine) – Movie Review

Mandy Moore and Claire Holt star as disillusioned American sisters vacationing in Mexico agree to join a couple of dodgy looking local blokes and a grizzled sea captain on an illegal cage dive to see the sharks.

Soon, of course, they are trapped in their anti-shark cage at the bottom of the ocean with less than an hour of oxygen left and great white sharks circling.

If it is survival of the fittest, then Moore and Holt look about the fittest, so maybe they will survive. But, then again, maybe not. Those flippin’ ready to pounce CGI sharks look pretty darned, well, hungry, if not scary. When they are not looking very CGI, they often look as plastic as the notorious shark in Jaws. But that’s part of the fun here, I guess.

Talking of Jaws, this movie is yet another spin-off from the 1975 classic. It’s not worthy to touch its fin, but then what is? It is more on a par with the 2016 The Shallows, but not quite as good. Oddly the film it is most like is Snatched, not a shark film at all but similar a two family member women in trouble abroad movie. That’s the film it is on a par with.

There’s the germ of a good chiller here. Much more footage is needed to fill in the sisters’ back story and persuade us that they’d really do something so stupid as  illegal cage diving. All we get is Lisa (Moore) is comparatively shy and reticent, whereas Kate (Holt) is all gung-ho and upfront. OK, and one of them is dumped by her boyfriend and feels ashamed. Eh?

The we need to learn much more about the two local hunks who pick them up and spend the night partying with them before proposing the daredevil devil. Then we need to learn much more about the grizzled sea captain Taylor (Matthew Modine), and give him a proper role to play. Having establish these characters fully, we could then spend some time later with their frantic efforts to save the sisters, and even with the ex-boyfriend or various family members’ attempts to do something, or a bit of story about the hoped-for rescue team.

It is very short and thin feeling at under 90 minutes, when a much longer, much more epic, much more expensive movie is needed. Of course there are advantages in keeping it short and taut. One, people don’t get bored easily. And two, it’s much cheaper to make. It cost only $5 million. And, naturally, it proved a very wise decision and investment. It took $42,705,000 in the US.

However, I must admit, the movie is kind of sneakily fun and kind of sneakily entertaining, even if all this patently obviously impossible, illogical or unrealistic, at least as shown. But then, it’s not a documentary, it’s only a movie. So go with the flow. But the tide is slightly against it.

It is made by the 41-year-old Cambridge-born Johannes Roberts, known for The Other Side of the Door (2016) and Storage 24 (2012). He directed his first feature film, Sanitarium (2001), at 23 and made the world’s first short series for mobile phones, When Evil Calls (2006). Roberts directs as well as writes with Ernest Riera.

They advertise is as ‘Stay out of the water’, which is very cheeky because ‘Don’t go in the water’ was the tagline for Jaws. But ‘Stay out of the water’ is not the actual moral of the story, It is, as so often with horror movie, if you are American, ‘Stay in America’. Abroad is too dangerous a place to venture!

Johannes Roberts will return for 48 Meters Down, this time featuring a group of girls who bite off more than they can chew when they set out for adventure in waters off the coast of Brazil.

Here’s a quite interesting fact: without direct light at 47 meters, blood looks green not red as it is seen in the movie.

Thin chopped bits of broccoli were added to the tank where Mandy Moore was filming to replicate the organisms found underwater. Forget the sharks, it was the devilish broccoli that Moore found her main foe 48 Meters Down!

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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