Review: 47 Metres Down


Claire Holt takes her sister Mandy Moore to Mexico to get over a breakup with her ex, who accused her of being boring. Well, they’re certainly not in for a boring trip. Skippered by old sea dog Matthew Modine, the sisters go out on a boat on the water, get into scuba gear, and lowered down in a cage to have some personal time with the sharks. At first it’s a fun bit of adrenaline rushing…and then something snaps and the cage plummets to the ocean floor. It’s going to get dark soon, communication with Modine is fuzzy, and there’s limited oxygen. Fun times.



Another day, another shark movie and sadly this 2017 flick from director Johannes Roberts (the weak “Storage 24”, the interesting “The Other Side of the Door”) and co-writer Ernest Riera (“The Other Side of the Door”) is a long way from “Jaws”. In fact, it’s quite similar to “Open Water”, only set underwater…and nowhere near as effective. It’s not very original, and it takes far too long to get to the nitty gritty. 25 minutes is far too long to be waiting for the fit to hit the shan, I believe.



In addition to being the two most vanilla young women on the planet (their basic dynamic is clichéd beyond belief), the two main characters here are absolute twits. Why do people even do this shark diving thing? It’s not a necessity of life, and weighing that against the danger of it all, I just don’t get the point. Watch a frigging nature documentary instead. So it’s hard for me to relate. And yet, given the very real, very relatable fear of sharks most of us have, I really should have found something relatable in this. Mandy Moore’s performance in particular is occasionally pretty effective in this regard once the film really gets going. You feel her fear and panic. Sadly, that was not soon enough or often enough to make the film effective for me. The scenery captured by Mark Silk (thus far mostly experienced in an underwater camera operator capacity) is occasionally stunning and Matthew Modine has a good small role as an easy-going, unshaven shark dive guy. The rest? A very mixed bag and nothing new.



The scary stuff works, but because most everything else doesn’t, it deprives even the scary stuff of being better. Ultimately a somewhat watchable, but not terribly interesting or effective thriller. Wonderfully shot, though and Mandy Moore is believably terrified.



Rating: C+

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