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This week we are reviewing 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. This film took a great premise and solid jump scares, but still bored me for half of the film. It definitely delivers on crunchy shark action, but if you want more than on-the-nose expositional dialogue and tissue paper thin character, maybe just rewatch Jaws.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged can be found in theaters now. The full movie!
47 Meters Down: Uncaged Synopsis
47 Meters Down: Uncaged is the sequel to the 2017 film, 47 Meters Down. It is by the same director, Johannes Roberts, but an all new cast of disposable teens.
The film is about four American teen girls in Mexico that go scuba diving into a secret submerged Mayan City inside underwater caves. The Mayan caves hold more than just the Mayan version of the terracotta warriors, it also contains deadly albino Great White Sharks! The sharks are blind, but that presents no problem for them, since their other senses are heightened, and these basic bitches keep screaming and clamoring about. With their air supply dwindling in the claustrophobic space, the girls and others get picked off one by one by the insatiable eating machines as they try to make their way out.
Watch 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
47 Meters Down: Uncaged Full Movie
Review of 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
This movie has a lot going for it. It has a great premise, plenty of quality jump scares, and delivers on the promise of brutal shark attacks. For me though, all of this is undercut by a boring, paint-by-numbers, super on-the-nose script. Much like The Meg, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged has a script that is obviously simplified so that it is easier to translate for international audiences.
What the script doesn’t contain is a character that I care about, or any interesting dialogue.
The strength of the film is the design of the sharks and the shark attack sequences. The action sequences are visceral and come fast and sudden.
Also, Quenton Tarantino would probably be a big fan of this movie since about 1/5 of it is devoted to close ups of women’s feet kicking towards the camera.
In the end, I was cheering for the sharks to kill everyone, because at least that ending would make it interesting. This isn’t a movie that I would recommend running to the theater for, but if you want to see a movie about sharks eating people, then you will definitely enjoy this. While I did enjoy some moments in this film, I was checking my watch any time that someone wasn’t getting eaten by a shark. It’s not terrible, but it’s also not very good.
Score for 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
4/10
If you like horror movies based in Mexico, check out our review of The Ruins:
Spoilers for 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
Expand for Spoilers
One of the features of this film is the weird soundtrack. It’s an amalgamation of 80’s pop music juxtaposed with an atmospheric electronic score. Which would be fine, but when you see a young black man absolutely rocking to an INXS song, it tends to distract.
The Opening
The opening of the film features the main character, Mia, played by Sophie Nélisse, being pushed into a pool by some stereotypical mean girls.
The setting is in Mexico on the Yucatan peninsula, but there is nary a Mexican to be seen, nor Spanish to be uttered. This is one of the many things in the movie that never get explained.
Check Out Our Review of Tusk
We find out that Mia’s Sister Sasha, played by Corrine Foxx, isn’t a big fan of Mia, because reasons.
Their dad is an underwater archaeologist(?) that just made a new discovery. He can’t spend time with Mia because he needs to set up the new site, so he gets them tickets to a glass bottom boat ride to see sharks feed.
A Fateful Decision
Mia and Corrine ditch the boat ride with the mean girls and instead go with two of Sasha’s friends, Alexa (Brianne Tju) and Nicole (Sistine Rose Stallone) to a secret lake.
They discover scuba equipment meant for the archaelogist and decide to dive to see the sunken Mayan City.
Why is the Mayan City under 47 Meters of water, you ask? Don’t!
Albino Shark Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo…
The Mayan City is barely explored by the girls or the script before they start getting eaten by giant blind albino great white sharks.
Mostly the people that get eaten are the ones that the girls meet at regular intervals. Finally when they find Mia’s father, he takes them to the surface and shows them a rope to climb up.
The sharks show up soon after and start attacking before the first girl can climb up. When Corrine tries to clambor up,the rope breaks.
Pause.
The rope breaks from the weight of two skinny teen girls.
This is the caliber of script we are dealing with.
The Ending of 47 Meters Down: Uncaged Explained
The film ends with Mia and Sasha, the last survivors, finding their way to the glass bottom boat and getting saved. But not before getting bitten by regular, non-albino great white sharks. Mia, in a constructed badass moment, stabs the shark biting her with a sharks tooth she was carrying.
In an attempt to communicate a non-existent character arch, Mia shares a look with the lead mean girl. But the moment carries the same amount of gravity as a feather on the moon.
Final Recommendations for 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
If you want to see sharks eat people and you really don’t care about anything else, this is the movie for you.