Studio: Lionsgate
Director: Johannes Roberts
Writer: Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera
Producer: James Harris, Mark Lane, Robert Jones
Stars: Sophie Nelisse, Corinne Foxx, Brianne Tju, Sistine Stallone, Davi Santos, Khylin Rhambo, Brec Bassinger, John Corbett
Review Score:
Summary:
Great white sharks threaten four teenage girls trapped inside submerged Mayan ruins.
Review:
Sasha remains unimpressed with her stepsister Mia. Mia’s father uncovered a sunken Mayan city, sending both halves of their family to Mexico so his tiny team can excavate the submerged site. As Sasha sees it, that makes Mia partly responsible for them having to attend high school south of the border.
Sasha still managed to make friends with Alexa and Nicole. Mia only made friends with the bottom of a pool, which is where a bitchy bully pushes her to give the catty cool kids a laugh.
“47 Meters Down: Uncaged” makes a relatively bold choice to establish three of its four heroines as somewhat heartless here. While Mia embarrassingly stands in a soggy school uniform, Sasha, Alexa, and Nicole take no action at all. They passively observe in put-upon disapproval as someone who should be “one of their own” suffers thorough humiliation.
“She’s not my sister,” claims Sasha to save some face. Mia repeats those words when Sasha’s mother (Nia Long in a role so irrelevant, she has the only speaking role that doesn’t receive a title card) makes a private plea for the two girls to get along prior to dad sending them on a shark sighting tour together.
As weird as it is to introduce core characters as initially unlikable instead of immediately endearing, at least “Uncaged” puts intriguing dynamics up for grabs. A lingering look suggests Sasha may feel some guilt for her failure to stand up for her stepsibling. The duo appears perfectly positioned to endure unexpected adversity that will build their bond while testing their true natures. Even when it arrives with a predictable outcome, I prefer background containing character-building conflict like this over an empty driving montage where four girls simply smile at each other while their hair blows in slow-motion to a pop rock song.
Except, what’s this? A driving montage where Sasha, Mia, Alexa, and Nicole smile at each other while their hair blows in slow-motion to a pop rock song?
Forget everything recapped to this point because none of it matters. Ten minutes into the movie, Sasha convinces Mia to ditch dad’s dumb boat tour and go swimming with the girls instead. Cue the just-mentioned montage as the four teens laugh and shout like they’ve been inseparable besties forever, never mind what took place at school five movie minutes ago.
That’s “47 Meters Down: Uncaged” in a pistachio shell. The film teases creative slants on traditional setups, but contentedly falls back on formula as soon as possible every single time.
With their “I hate yous” conveniently pushed to the past, the four girls don scuba suits for a self-guided spin around dad’s sunken city. This underwater environment provides the “47 Meters Down” sequel’s biggest boon. Giving the girls some freedom of movement kills the completely claustrophobic effect of being confined in a diving cage. But the location regains considerable atmosphere from spooky ruins and crumbling stone statues eerily illuminated by flashlights. As scary movie settings go, this is a good one to be in for 70 minutes.
As expected, complications arise in the form of falling columns and collapsed tunnels. Trapped in the same submerged city where hungry sharks swim, the four teenagers must find an escape route and fight their way to the surface before their oxygen runs out, or the sharks slaughter them first.
“47 Meters Down: Uncaged” makes a critic’s job easy, and boring, by being too middle of the road to inspire any bluster or ballyhoo one way or another. For every pro, there’s a con, ultimately evening out into an entirely average thriller.
Jump scares do the job of both jumping and scaring. In addition to another narrow shark escape every six minutes or so, a decent sense of suffocation closes in on all sides as the girls get caught in choking passageways, air pockets with barely enough room to breathe, or sucked into raging whirlpools.
But there are just as many dry spells of slow swims through murky waters for minutes on end as there are moments of panicked intensity. Director Johannes Roberts’ tension tactic specifically stretches each scene’s sentence so punctuation provides the pop. Still, the accordion he uses for his simple symphony of suspense expands far more often than it contracts.
The stepsisters essentially become interchangeable. One of their friends, Alexa, exhibits no easily describable personality other than, “the girl vaguely involved with dad’s assistant.” Nicole can be called selfish or a screw-up, but even she isn’t all that distinguishable either. It’s almost enough to make complaints of foggy and frenetic cinematography moot since even though you can’t tell who is who half the time, it doesn’t make an appreciable difference anyway.
“47 Meters Down: Uncaged” salvages some serviceable thrills. Don’t expect anything above mostly empty-headed horror though. Submerging seven people instead of only two heightens the body count with several spectacularly savage kills. Yet genuine drama that the first film (review here) had goes on the chopping block so the sequel can chum the sea with flashier frights.
“Uncaged” appears at peace with a give-take that reduces a once modestly novel take on aquatic/shark horror to fire-and-forget fare. That’s fine if all anyone wants is an easily digestible snack in between heartier horror movie meals. But this assembly line mentality for crafting a Costco-brand chiller might have carried “47 Meters Down” as deep as it can go, which is not far enough to necessitate a third installment. This franchise can safely sleep with the Mexican tetra fishes at this point and no one will bother looking for the body.
Review Score: 50
Everyone else who has no problem with a fright flick that feels like “Lizzie McGuire” decided to get dark with a PG-13 Halloween special should do just fine.