47 Metres Down: Uncaged

Image credit: Wikipedia

More and more in modern cinema, piggybacking has become the ‘it’ trend. Reboots and remakes and spin-offs dominate an increasing number of screens, most often resulting in a clutch of movies that audiences derive pleasure from in yelling at the stupidity of them. One genre in which this has been done so much it’s practically become a subgenre, is horror: particularly the dumb eco horror or ‘natural’ monster movie. Films like 47 Metres Down: Uncaged.

The film follows a pair of teenaged stepsisters who join their friends in exploring the labyrinthine network of caves in a sunken Mayan city. When a pillar collapses, the group becomes separated in the silt cloud and the noise attracts a great white shark that has taken up residence in the deep dark city. Their situation goes from bad to worse when they reunite and discover that they are now hopelessly lost, running low on oxygen, and being stalked by this terrifying predator.

With absolutely no ties whatsoever to 47 Metres Down, another suspenseful shark film in which a cage dive goes wrong, this film is more about the terrifying action rather than the suspense of a predator movie. Loaded with jump-scares and really doubling down on making a hopeless situation even worse, this movie is ridiculous but also kind of scary when you consider the real dangers that do come with things like adventure-diving, underwater excavation, cave exploration, and such like.

This fear-by-imagining-if-you-were-there is really the only thing this movie has going for it. The performances are fine, given that we get no insight into who the characters are and thus, they are all boring, flat characters that don’t inspire any emotional attachment at all. It’s definitely a movie where all the emphasis is on the suspense of the situation and how many jump-scares can be crammed in; the characters take the back seat, lucky to be in the car at all. Some attempt to inspire sympathy for the lead heroine is made at the very beginning during a schoolyard bullying scene, but it’s haphazard and then no further explanation is done on it so it becomes kind of pointless as an opener.

Image credit: GenreVision

If you’re after an obvious, predictable, and frustrating shark movie to yell at, then I would recommend 47 Metres Down: Uncaged. Partner and I enjoyed groaning and exclaiming in frustrated disbelief from reel one; and while I don’t believe that is ever the intention of the filmmakers, sometimes you just want a movie that is so bad you can get angry at it. Afterall, yelling and venting is often very cathartic.

Director: Johannes Roberts, 2019

Cast: Sophie Nelisse, Corinne Fox, Brianne Tju, Sistine Rose Stallone, Nia Long, Davi Santos, Brec Bassinger, Khylin Rhambo, & John Corbett