A 47 metros

I had a great time with this one! It really succeeded where few monster movies manage to. It provided tension, scary moments and it did made me hold my breath!

Beside this year's The Shallows, we got In The Deep, which is a beautifully shot movie, good acting, nice reactions, pretty much the whole nine yards here. It was a great little movie, I'm just sad it didn't get the attention it should have. People need to know that this is not another low budget shark movie, but a damn good one!

Watch it and you will not regret. It provides a great, great atmosphere and surely enough, most of you will enjoy it.

Cheers!

Although it can have a handful of somewhat intense moments, 47 Meters Down sadly proves to be nothing but another generic shark movie, and to be frank, a rather pathetic attempt at that. I'll start with the films strengths, that being why most of the people will watch the film, for the suspense. I feel all the suspenseful moments in the film come from the situations under water, and not at all the danger of the sharks themselves. The sharks throughout the film are almost comically thrown in there, so much to the point, that I laughed whenever they came on screen. I enjoyed the claustrophobic nature it had been trapped in the cage under water, not knowing what to do or where to go, but our lead characters are too stupid to truly be concerned for, and the lead actresses hardly capable of carrying the film to the lengths it needs them too. The acting is quite bad, incredibly overdramatic, silly at times, and the dialogue is atrocious. Besides the sharks literally being a joke upon the screen, the worst part of the film is hands down the twist ending, which is not only frustrating, but absolutely ridiculous, and completely unnecessary. The film is unbelievable, dull at times, and simply too stupid to handle the fear of its somewhat interesting premise. In the end, 47 Meters Down is probably left better at the bottom of the ocean, than it was in major theaters across the globe. My Rating: 3.5/10

Me and my fiance decided to watch this film as we had watched Jaws 3 the night before. Thought it would be interesting and it was entertaining as it was one of those movies you talk over as the characters in the film proceed to not use their minds at all and make poor decision after poor decision! I am betting this film was originally going to be a direct to DVD type film, but they ended up releasing it in theaters and considering it cost only about six million to make and went on to gross 44 million I would say they made a good decision. I am glad I did not see this in theaters and rather just watched it on Netflix as it was okay to some degree, but I could not have made fun of it in the theater like I did in my fiance's living room. The movie just begs a person to yell criticisms at the two main characters!

The story has two sisters who are in Mexico living it up. Apparently, one of the sister's recently had her boyfriend break up with her so the other sister gets her to go out and party! They meet two guys who get the girls to sign up to go on a boat that looks like crap, then go into a rusty shark cage and then plunge into the waters that are filled with great whites as the idiots on the boat throw chum into the water thus sending the sharks into a feeding frenzy. What could go wrong? Well, pretty much everything as the rusty, rickety wench that holds the cage breaks, go figure, plunging the girls 47 meters down. Hey, that's the title! They are running low on oxygen and the only help they have is the captain and his crew who at least stayed and tried to help them out and just didn't pack up and forget about them. Unfortunately, the girls keep insisting on leaving the safety of the cage. I can understand it the first time, and when they needed the oxygen tank, but not when they saw the flashlight in the water. They not only have to contend with sharks, the possibility of getting the bends but poor judgement by everyone!

As I said, this film was not bad, but certainly nothing great either. It passed the time nicely as it is a rather absurd movie. For one thing, sharks generally do not try to break through shark cages and rarely go for humans to chomp on unless said person is on a surfboard because then the shark mistakes them for a seal. Here it was ridiculous how determined the sharks are to get at people! Then the whole premise is idiotic as it is clear the captain recognizes the one girl was not experienced and considering how he actually did try to help them he I am betting he would have nixed the whole thing seeing how she was behaving on deck. The ending was a bit predictable too as the captain mentioned something that one who watches a lot of movies will know will come into play otherwise no mention would have been made of it at all. Entertaining, to a degree, good, not very.

47 Meters Down is a highly claustrophobic shark movie starring Mandy Moore and Matthew Modine but it's flaws are quite unique.

Telling the story of two girls who go into a shark cage in Mexico to see the great whites but fall into peril when the chain snaps and they're plunged into darkness.

Let me say that visually the movie is incredible and is one of the most claustrophobic heart pounding films I've seen in years. You feel for these ladies, the movie gets across the panic, severity and time restrictions very well and it taps into something which makes me personally feel very uncomfortable.

But, and it's a big but the movie's logistics are dumbfoundingly stupid and defy logic. What I mean by that is that nobody involved bothered doing any research into oxygen at these depths, what is done here not only isn't possible but is to moronic science fiction levels. It quite frankly insults the intelligence of the viewer.

If you can get past that (And I couldn't) it's quite a memorable little film that looks great, has passable performances (I've always liked Moore) and is fairly unique.

If they'd done some research and applied it to the film then this would have been a lot better. However if they had then this would have had to be a different film altogether to be even remotely realistic.

The Good:

Looks incredible

Sets the tone perfectly

Mandy Moore

Unique stuff

The Bad:

Offensively unrealistic

It's summer again;  it's a shark movie.  Lisa and Kate are two sisters on holiday in Mexico with one grieving a lost relationship and the other looking for fun.  Against their better judgement they go shark cage diving 5 metres below a vessel that looks like it should have been in the salvage yard 20 years ago.  After a mechanical failure the cage plummets down to the sea bed..... (Go on, how deep? Have a guess.  Go on, go on, go on ...)

With sharks circling and air running low, will the girls survive their ordeal?  

Last year, one of the surprise movies of the year for me was "The Shallows", which I really enjoyed.  A tense, well made yarn held together by a solid performance by Blake Lively and with a genuine escalation of tension (albeit let down by a poor ending). 

"47 Metres Down" differs from that film in three major respects:  B- movie acting, from Mandy Moore and Claire Holt (with Holt being significantly better than Moore); a screenplay by Johannes Roberts and Ernest Riera that is both ponderous and unbelievable; and dialogue that is at times truly execrable.  

The film really takes its time to get to the 'sharp end' (as it were). Once there, the actions of the girls are so clinically stupid that they are deserving of Darwin Award nominations. Fortunately, the IQs of the sharks (well realised as CGI by Outpost VFX) are only marginally greater:  the sharks will appear and then go away for ten minutes at a time, just so that the implausible plot can progress unmolested.

These films always need an escalator for the tension:  in "The Shallows" it was the rising tide; in this film it is the air supply. This element works well and adds an additional element of claustrophobia to the film that is already at 11 on the scale (you surely don't need me to tell you that claustrophobics need to avoid this film!). 

Much of the dialogue is expository regarding what is going on in the darkness and is so repetitive ("We ARE going to get out of here Kate!") that it would make a good drinking game.  The worst dialogue award though goes to Matthew Modine ("Memphis Belle") who's repeated medical descriptions of "the bends" becomes mildly comical - I literally got a fit of the giggles at one point.

I'm not going to completely savage the film though, since there IS a nice twist to the ending, albeit one that's heavily signposted.  And instead of reaching constantly for the classic "Ben's head in the boat" jump scare, the film occasionally teases the audience with set- ups that ultimately just feature murky water and nothing more. 

My recommendation:  if you've not yet seen "The Shallows", check that out on DVD and give this one a miss.

(For the graphical version of this review please visit bob-the-movie- man.com. Thanks).