47 Meters Down Reviews

I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Mandy Moore, I thought I might as well check it out. I have to admit that I was also wondering how they would develop a whole movie solely on the concept of 2 girls in a shark cage. Well, the title was already a major spoiler which wasn’t really a good start. Still, I always had a weak spot for such minimalistic features with only 2 characters with only 1 location and the sharks looked quite awesome and were fairly convincing so the damned thing actually had some potential. However, there was one thing that pretty much ruined the whole movie for me. Indeed, even though Mandy Moore and Claire Holt were both quite charming (even though I heard of her before, it was in fact the very first time I saw Claire Holt in action), I really had a hard time to care about their characters though. First of all, they could have paid more attention to the intro to properly introduce the 2 girls. It was not it was bad but it was seriously generic but I have to admit that it wasn’t a big deal. However, the big issue was how they kept screaming and, when they would finally settle down, they would be then talking all the time which was just so idiotic since they were supposed to be cautious about how much oxygen they used. Of course, you could argue that they were panicking but it did make their characters rather cringe-inducing to behold. I mean, can you imagine if their characters would have been slightly more cool-headed and completely silent for most of the duration? It would have been much more entertaining to behold. Finally, with their erratic and rather irresponsible behaviour, there is no way they could have lasted for so long under the water with their oxygen supply. Anyway, to conclude, because these 2 main characters were rather annoying, I didn’t care much for the damned thing after all and I don’t think it is really worth a look. 

Two sisters vacationing in Mexico are trapped in a shark cage at the bottom of the ocean, and must fight to survive with less than an hour of oxygen left and great white sharks circling nearby.

We seem to be getting a bit of an influx of mainstream shark movies lately! :) Unfortunately, this one pales in comparison to last year's The Shallows. It follows the same principle of trying to work as much tension as possible out of a simple situation, and some of the ideas and concepts are pretty well worked out.

But it's all ruined by one simple problem: the characters are boring, which kills our investment in their predicament. The impression I got from the performances was that the cast and crew were just on holiday and passively making a movie on the side.

That and I found the constant overuse of close-ups to be incredibly distracting; it's kind of hard to establish atmosphere when the camera is almost always shoved right in the actors' faces.

In the end, this is just another mediocre thriller.

My rating: 50%