“47 Meters Down”, two sisters find themselves at the mercy of a lurker of the sea with a thirst for blood. On the rebound after a devastating break-up, Lisa (Mandy Moore) is ready for a thrilling adventure while on vacation in Mexico. Even still, she needs a little extra persuasion when her daring sister Kate (Claire Holt) suggests they go shark diving with some locals. They board a boat captained by Taylor (Matthew Modine), and once underwater in a protective cage, Lisa and Kate catch a once in a lifetime, face-to-face look at majestic Great Whites. But when their worst fears are realized and the cage breaks away from their boat, they find themselves plummeting to the bottom of the seabed, too deep to radio for help without making themselves vulnerable to the savage sharks, their oxygen supplies rapidly dwindling. “47 Meters Down” is written and directed by Johannes Roberts, and is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense, peril, bloody images, and brief strong adult language.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, a film like “47 Meters Down” comes along and adds to an already terrifying history of shark attack movies. I of course deem this a shark attack movie on the loosest of terms because this movie offers the bare minimum in terms of satisfying material for fans of the overcrowded subgenre or even appearances by our sharp-toothed monsters of the sea. At this point in film, if you’ve seen one shark movie, you’ve seen them all, and “47 Meters Down” is flimsy even in comparison to something like last year’s “The Shallows” that constantly kept the danger and the pacing of the movie moving, well beyond the average 90 minute mark for these kind of movies. Roberts movie clocks in at 84 minutes, and with only about 10 minutes of actual sharks being present in the film (I’m being generous), there’s very few thrills or payoffs for anyone who watched this trailer and thought it was promising for human protagonists being under water for once, instead of on top or in it. The movie gives forth a worthy gimmick in terms of its structure, but offers very little of anything in terms of positive returns to make it memorable against classics like “Jaws” or “Open Water”.

In terms of lighting and overall shot composition for the movie, it’s very limited of what it can do from being angled at this capacity. I do give props that this is a movie that actually relates what it means to be under the sea, in terms of all of its darkness and immensity that can easily get one lost if trapped under such a circumstance. This also benefits the production designs in terms of the actual C.G sharks, and how that lack of color can do wonders for covering up the jarring movements of such a computerized property. But the angles particularly in that of the action on the rare occurance that it strikes, is too close and zoomed in to fully register just what is happening at any given moment. It almost works as a blessing and a curse against the abilities of the production team for making the natural lighting come across as faithful because there was so much going on that I couldn’t piece together beyond the fact that these two women were being attacked. In my opinion, it desperately needed some further angles that would study the cage that they are trapped in from the shark’s point-of-view, not necessarily in a POV style shot, but more in the wide angle lens that could capture and build on the tension of the attack that is seconds away. Because this movie lacks major emphasis on that tension, there’s very little times where I felt invested in the well being of these characters and their constant battle to air level.

As for the protagonists themselves, Mandy Moore definitely can’t be faulted for getting her second chance at Hollywood, long after her fifteen minutes burned out after a noteworthy performance in 2002’s “A Walk To Remember”. Here, Moore lends herself to an action/horror genre and the payoff feels very unnatural for someone not afraid to spread her lungs when it comes to emoting. As Lisa, Moore’s screaming and moaning throughout the film repeatedly took me out of the movie for its repetition in patterns that felt very manufactured in terms of petrifying nature. I could write this off except the way Lisa is written is the gullable third-tier female character in one of these films, instead of the lead protagonist that the movie makes her out to be. There’s never that moment of transformation in her character, even going so far as to having her phone it in during an ending that underwhelms from the second you realize what is going on. As for Clare Holt, the film kind of forgets about her with twenty minutes left, and focuses more on Lisa. It isn’t enough that these women waste most of their oxygen by trying to swim to the top, even after being told to just stay in the cage, but they repeatedly keep leaving their only safe zone from the sharks to give this film any kind of suspense from the minutes that are literally wasting away.

The first act story didn’t even offer anything in terms of exposition to eventually make it tie together for a finale that makes you understand these characters. There’s a brief throwaway scene in terms of Lisa’s boyfriend leaving her and this trip being a sort of escape from reality for the two women, but that poor last few minutes that I mentioned earlier does nothing to tie it all together and shape her into being a new woman with a new lease on life. Once it hits underwater with an hour left in the already brief run time, I started to understand that this is less a shark movie and more a survival movie for the women’s decreasing air supply that leaves them pressed for time. Even the wound that Lisa clearly suffers on her leg during the trailer isn’t even done by the shark itself, but by the cage that falls on her leg, an example of this film having nowhere to move in terms of creative, and quite figuratively and literally writing itself into a cage with very little opportunity to escape.

Far and away, the biggest positive for this movie is in the sound mixing and minimal approach to musical score by composers TomandAndy, two guys most notable for their tones in horror for “The Mothman Prophecies” and the remake of “The Hills Have Eyes”. Here, they manipulate the muted tones off in the distance in favor of real time sounds and atmosphere from the seabed that does wonders in capturing the lack of echo or immensity in volume that surrounds our duo of protagonists. There’s definitely musical accompanyment there, but it’s so distant that it could pass for a surrounding boat’s frequency or just the hallucinations of the girls who have sucked up too much air. I love a movie whose musical score serves as almost a gimmick of the world depicted in the film by itself, and TomandAndy are two of the very best when it comes to drilling on terror at whatever level in release that they deem necessary.

THE VERDICT – “47 Meters Down” doesn’t have the shock or awe to compete with the better movies of the genre that balance the concepts of humanity and breaking points accordingly in their clash with urgency. This one lacks the sharks, competent shots, or even compelling characters to make you ever invest in their struggles, and because of such, this one sinks fast, and becomes bait for the bigger Summer blockbusters that simply can’t be caged. Moore and Holt are believable enough as sisters, but are given such hollow and ample material to make their characters shine in their finest hours. While “47 Meters Down” is an improvement from Johannes Roberts 2016 effort “The Other Side of the Door”, his lack of memorable material settles for the latter in the sink-or-swim atmosphere.

4/10