Movie Review: 47 Meters Down (2017)

47 Meters Down (2017) co-written and directed by Johannes Roberts

Boring older sister Lisa (Mandy Moore) invites younger sister Kate (Claire Holt) on her Mexican vacation that Lisa had planned with her boyfriend. They have some fun hanging out at the hotel. One night, Lisa admits that her boyfriend dumped her because he thought she was boring, so Kate takes Lisa on a night of fun. They meet two guys who love to go diving in a cage to watch sharks underwater. Lisa takes a lot of convincing and guilting to go on the excursion with the guys. Once they are out there, things inevitably go wrong and they get stuck in the cage 47 meter below the surface. Can the sisters make it out of the shark-infested depths?

Of course all sorts of complications set in, forcing the sisters to do various things that look...unadvisable. They are inexperienced divers and are panicking, so their behavior follows some warped or ill-formed logic. Their characters are cliche and neither the writing nor the acting gets past cliche. The other human characters, who are the diving experts, don't seem to have a clue about what to do and contribute almost no help. I understand the filmmakers wanted to keep things from the sisters' perspectives but it seemed unrealistic that the rescue effort was so slow and ineffectual. The other characters in the story, by which I mean the sharks, are completely perfunctory and just show up for jump scares. The human characters spend a lot of time narrating what viewers see, like "there's a shark by you!" or "I should take this spear gun." The movie is very predictable with only a few moments of the sort of tension that should be throughout the whole running time. The big twist at the end seems obvious given the paint-by-numbers plotting.

Watching the movie feels like the movie makers saw Jaws and loved the bit with Richard Dreyfuss in the shark cage. Then they decided to make a whole movie out of that without really researching diving or shark cages or shark behavior. It wasn't convincing or engaging. It's a shame because the premise of being trapped underwater is interesting and the film makers clearly avoided treating the sisters like eye-candy. The movie has a lot of unfulfilled potential.

Not recommended.