Young sisters Kate and Lisa and travel to Mexico for a vacation filled with sun, fun and adventure. Lisa needs some extra persuasion when Kate suggests that they go diving in shark-infested waters. Safe in their protective cage, the thrill-seeking siblings come face to face with a group of majestic great whites. Their worst fears soon become a reality when the cage breaks away from their boat, sending them plummeting to the ocean floor with a dwindling supply of oxygen.
With the trailer for a sequel to 47 Metres Down being released, what better time to check out the original. The fact that a sequel has been made tells you so much about the state of Hollywood atm. The initial film was made as a direct-to-DVD feature, but thanks to the success of 2016's The Shallows, another studio bought the film in order to release it in theatres to take advantage of the audience that it believes will shell out for any film that features women and sharks. The film ended up making 60 million at the box office easily making back the 5 million dollar budget, so yeah...time for a sequel.
Let's talk about the quality of this first film though. The premise is actually reasonably fresh. Unlike most shark films, which have its protagonists out of the water with greater freedom of movement, 47 Metres Down puts our main characters in the creatures domain, which greatly restricts their movements, as well as having a "ticking timer" element as the air tanks deplete. In this regard, the film has some similarities to James Cameron's 2011 survival film, Sanctum.
As this was initially meant to go straight to DVD, you can see where many corners were cut in order to get the protagonists into the dangerous situation. Despite having some recognisable faces in the cast such as Mandy Moore (This Is Us), Claire Holt (Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries), Matthew Modine (Full Metal Jacket), no effort has been put into setting up the premise or crafting likeable characters. While in the latter half of the film, there are a number of pretty well-thought-out plans put in place (granted, often poorly executed), the first half of the film is full of inorganic dialogue that creates the most unorthodox motivations.
Holt is quite a likeable character, as she has a good head on her shoulders and after they get into their predicament, she drives the story forward. Moore, on the other hand, portrays such a weak and pathetic character, her rapid switching between the bubbly "this is amazing!!" personality and the *constant screaming* is incredibly grating and makes you wish that the sharks would hurry up and eat her.
There is a pretty big issue that you have to get past early in the film and that is the ability of the characters to communicate. They are not wearing masks that cover their ears at all, so they should not be able to hear each other so clearly, neither should they be able to use a radio with the surface, but it's one of those things you just have to pretend is find and move on. on the upside, the ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement) is really well synced up. [Note: viewing the film on Netflix, there were a few occasions where the audio was so loud that it distorted in the speakers. Reducing the volume did not seem to fix it, so I can only assume it has something to do with the Netflix formatting, but it could just be my device]
While the events leading up to the premise are absolutely preposterous, a fair amount of effort has been put into ensuring there is a clear direction for the film to go in. What was interesting is that the sharks are not actually a big player in the plot. They are a plot device that helps with the pacing, but it is actually the air supply that drives the story. The sharks are there purely to restrict the movement of the protagonists while providing some jump scares.
From a visual standpoint, the sharks are brilliantly done. They look incredibly realistic (though their behaviour certainly isn't). The dark and murky waters work well to reduce visibility and hide the threat of the sharks, which helps with the jump scares and reducing the cost of the CGI, but I would propose that actually seeing the sharks constantly circling would actually be a greater source of tension. The low visibility does bring about one of the best scenes of the film which legitimately was scarier than the all the shark scares combined (keep a lookout for the torch).
The film does a good job at including some of the more technical aspects of diving, from the 200-bar scuba tanks to the bends, and nitrogen narcosis. The execution is somewhat less impressive, with an inconsistent amount of effort put into incorporating these elements in advance, which means the film forecasts what will happen right before it happens.
There are only really six characters involved in this story, and we spend 95% of the film with two of them. It's another element that emphasises how little the sharks really factor into the story. As this is a survival film, one would hope for a large cast to kill off in a gory fashion, but as we only really have two main characters in danger, the risks to them are much lower (in formulaic Hollywood films at least).
The ending is both impressed and disappointing. With an inability to follow through with a direction that really would have left a huge impact on the audience. Instead, it immediately abandons the idea (and I do mean immediately) rushing the film to an alternate ending. There are many points at which the film could have ended, and the director has chosen the least satisfying choice.
47 Metres Down is a pretty well-made B-movie. Production quality is reasonable, but you can definitely tell this was not shot to a theatrical standard. It does have a lot of closeups and some well-executed cinematography decisions that would create an immersive experience on a big screen. Moore is an incredibly irritating character, but the film provides enough scares to make it worth a watch.