47 Meters Down

47 Meters Down

Starring Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Chris Johnson, Matthew Modine

Directed by Johannes Roberts

The Story:
On a tropical vacation, sisters Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt) are having the time of their lives as Lisa deals with having her boyfriend leave her for being too boring.  Kate has the perfect solution to make him jealous - deep sea dive with sharks.  Lisa is more than skeptical, and is all the more worried when she sees the nearly dilapidated boat, rusty cage and strange captain (Matthew Modine), but Kate convinces her to go in the cage with her.

Once under water, Lisa's fears leave her as she marvels at the wonders of the sea - until the cable snaps and the girls are hurled 47 meters down the ocean floor.  With their oxygen running low and an army of sharks surrounding them, it seems hopeless that the sisters will make it out of the ocean alive, but there's always hope.

The Synopsis:
I don't know what it is about terrible movies and the number 47 ("47 Ronin," "Hitman: Agent 47"), but it's definitely not a lucky number.  Third time's a charm with "47 Meters Down," but once again it proves to be the most unlucky number in cinema.

Last year saw the surprise hit "The Shallows" entertain the notion of one person's struggle for survival against a deadly shark, one of nature's most apex predators.  Blake Lively turned the short film into a harrowing quest for survival, as she uses her wits and know-how to go up against her foe.  It was exciting and dramatic, and a surprise sleeper hit.

So of course, they have to make another human versus shark movie, but up the ante: now there's two women instead of one, going up against an unknown number of sharks, instead of just one.  Though nowhere near a sequel, it's got that sequel feel as the characters are extremely one dimensional, the sharks are barely existent, and the story doesn't make a lot of sense besides the fact that it's downright boring.

It's a shame, because we got two of the hottest actresses in the business right now.  Mandy Moore is riding high off her acclaimed "This is Us" series, and Claire Holt is known for her role in "The Vampire Diaries" and "The Originals."  Yet here, you could've cast two girls off the street to play the roles and it would've had the same emotional outcome.  Moore is the sheltered, fearful, boring older sister.  Holt is the younger, more adventurous, more boisterous one.  You've seen these types of characters before, and they play them out as predictably as you'd expect.  When they're stuck at the bottom of the ocean, Moore spends her time hyperventilating (despite constant warnings it makes your oxygen deplete faster), while Holt remains level-headed and comes up with an escape plan.  

Thankfully, the movie doesn't spend a lot of time on exposition or character development, but it's also to its detriment, as we don't give a care whether these girls live or die.  We know nothing about them except the bare necessities, and they maintain their one-note caricatures throughout.  Not that the script has any Oscar-worthy direction...or even Emmy worthy.  It's a bare bones script that wastes time on having characters describe what's happening (at one point Kate finds a harpoon and says..."harpoon."  Like we didn't know what a harpoon was), and the most obvious "plot twist" that's so hackneyed and dulled down that it would make Hitchcock turn in his grave. 

As it is with these types of movies, sharks are seen as blood-thirsty human hunters who stop at nothing to kill all humans (which, surprisingly, is not how sharks really act).  Plus, after reading information from real life SCUBA instructors, the sharks are the least of the girls' worries, yet the director doesn't focus on any of the bigger dangers they face rather than the sharks themselves.

The Summary:
Throwing away what could've been an epic survival story, "47 Meters Down" instead relies on old tropes of sharks out for the kill against two hapless women, and the result is a snoozefest of mediocrity.

The Score: D+