47 Metres Down
Director: Johannes Roberts
Talent: Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Matthew Modine, Chris Johnson
Released: 26th July
Another form of anti-shark propaganda! Lisa, the boring brunette (Moore), and Katie, the fun blonde (Holt), are sisters on holiday. Lisa has organised the trip because she was dumped by her boyfriend Stewart, because she is boring. She claims the relationship was the one thing she had done right in her life. Despite the sisters being supposedly close, Lisa lies to Kate about the break-up because she was ‘embarrassed’.
In an attempt to win back Stewart, and prove how fun Lisa is, the women go to a nightclub, have shots, dance in slow motion, and befriend men who tell them of shark cage diving. Perceived as being the epitome of zany fun, the two embark on the diving, allaying their logistical concerns (Lisa has never dived before, the cage is rusty, the boat lads are dodgy) by thinking of the sweet, boyfriend-winning, social media content they will generate from their dive.
Donning the most flattering wetsuits known to man, the pair check out the sharks and, predictably, the cage plummets, you guessed it, ‘47 Metres Down,’ they get injured, and the sharks menace and try to eat them. To enable the hollow and boring dialogue to take place, the dive is equipped with state-of-the-art communication equipment, despite pretty much all other tools breaking and leading to their dangerous predicament.
There is one moment you won’t see coming, and some rare moments of suspense, but there needs to be a lot more to sustain interest.
It’s hard to tell which is worse, the acting or the script, but either way the characters are dumb and you end up pitying the shark: perpetually demonised by pop culture when more people are killed annually by chairs.
Words – Sarah Taaffe-Maguire
