Also checked out the sequel everyone has been asking for: 47 Meters Down: Uncaged! This is the “sequel” to the original 47 Meters Down which was about a pair of sisters who get in a shark cage, shark cage goes in the water, chain breaks, cage sinks to the bottom of the ocean (angry sharks circling). That film got a lot of good buzz but I didn’t much care for it. So I guess this sequel is trying to boot up a 47 Meters Down franchise? But it’s an in-name-only sequel – none of the actors return and nobody references that first movie… though the director himself returns for more shark-bitin’ action.
So Uncaged stars four teenage girls (one of whom is the daughter of Sylvester Stallone… yay?) who attend an international school in Yucatan, Mexico. The two leads are sisters whose dad is an archaeologist exploring sunken ancient Mayan ruins. The sisters and two friends go cave diving in another part of the ruin. One things leads to another and there’s a cave in, they can’t get out, they are running out of air, they get lost… and there are sharks… cave sharks…. blind cave sharks (probably that shoot piranha and have frickin’ lasers).
This is a pretty not great movie for the vast amount of the run time. It does looks like they built ruins and caves, flooded them, and filmed it all underwater, largely in the dark… clearly the movie was a job of work to film and no doubt to act in. It looks exhausting so credit to them for making the movie look claustrophobic and tense. In fact, it kind of reminded me of The Descent – that movie about female spelunkers who get menaced by devolved blind humanoid creatures… only the set is underwater and the mutants are sharks. Not sure if this similarity is a net positive though (especially if you didn’t like The Descent).
The big problem with this movie is that the four lead actors spend the entire film with SCUBA masks on (ones that cover their face so they can talk). You can barely tell which character is talking much less which is being menaced and possibly eaten by a shark. And when the action kicks in, it’s a muddy, messy, chaotic bunch of indistinct images that are impossible to track. It’s a mess. It’s a real mess.
But, hell, the end of the movie is actually really damn good. Improbable and unlikely, but really solid shark-on-human, human-on-shark violence. It helps that it doesn’t take place in an underwater maze, in the dark, and they go for some cool slow-mo shots so you can actually see what the hell is going on. For this very solid ending, I came away from the movie feeling kind of positive about it. It’s a super, super low recommendation (if you can even call it that) but it really does almost redeem the movie.
Look… it’s a shark attack movie. It’s been done to death… stupid people do stupid things and get eaten by sharks. The movie is poorly filmed and terribly edited but at least they had ambition building flooded sets and filming in them… and, ultimately, it came together at the very very end. If you are a shark attack movie fan (those exist, right?), it’s kind of worth seeing. I thought it was better than the first movie at least.
Score: 70