I was busy for a few weeks, but I’ve returned to tell you all about a movie that you probably won’t see anyway. You’re welcome.
First of all, how the fuck is this not called 48 Meters Down? I mean, honestly, that shit writes itself. Regardless, I don’t remember much about the first movie. I remember it being a decent shark movie that I probably wouldn’t really remember and I pretty much hit the nail on the head with that analysis. This sequel is more of the same. This is basically a SciFi channel movie with a little more money and talent behind it. It’s not a terrible movie and you won’t regret spending 90 minutes this way, but you probably won’t remember it when the next sequel comes out. Though that better be called 49 Meters Down or I will just lose it.
Main girl Mia is attending school in Mexico when her archeologist/marine biologist/something science-y father gives her a shark tooth and relays the story of how some sharks got stuck in some underwater caves and started a colony within the cave system. He then remarks that he’s going to explore some underwater ruins nearby. You might think that proper precautions would be taken considering the cave-shark story that he just explained. You would be wrong. Mia and her friends decide to go off and explore the caves themselves. To the perplexing surprise of the girls, there are sharks in the caves. Presumably, the caves are 47 meters below the surface or else I just don’t know what to trust anymore.
I have some nice things to say about this. It is very well shot and there are actually a few moments of genuine suspense. The sharks, who are blind from centuries (?) of being exactly 47 meters below the surface, are well-designed, even if the CGI doesn’t work at times. I don’t recognize any of the actors, but the performances are fine. Really, there is nothing terrible here. The problem is that there isn’t anything particularly good either.
The director (Johannes Roberts) returns from the original, but this reminds me a bit of another sequel that he directed: The Strangers: Prey at Night. Much like that Strangers sequel, this is competently-made with a couple of good sequences, but it also feels out-of-place in a theater. This feels like a straight to DVD/VOD movie that got thrown into theaters to make a few extra bucks. The performances also feel like something out of a SciFi channel movie. The four girls are competent, but they don’t have much to work with. The characters are bland, the dialogue is bland and the whole affair feels like something you should be watching on Netflix because you think that you might have seen the first one.
Also like a SciFi channel movie, this is a strictly PG-13 affair. Why it isn’t PG, I’m not exactly sure. There are a few deaths, all of which amount to a blur of a shark going across the screen and a character being replaced by a CGI blob of blood that looks like something that I had in a screen saver in high school. While there are a few moments of suspense, the majority of the film is a redundant sequence of the girls swimming through tunnels while I waited for the two that would obviously die to finally died. Sure enough, they died, but it took a whole lot of cave swimming to get there.
When I left the theater, there was a mother with two young sons walking behind me. The kids were maybe 10 and 8 years old. Those kids fucking loved this movie and I listened to them talk about how it was the scariest movie that they had ever seen. If this is the best horror movie that you have shown your kids, then you have failed as a parent. However, your kids might still like it. As for adults, you are better off waiting about 10 minutes for this to be available on demand and then forgetting it about 10 minutes after it’s over.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/47_Meters_Down:_Uncaged#/media/File:47MetersDownUncaged.jpg
