Review of 47 Meters Down (2017) by Matt C — 19 Jun 2017

High-concept thrillers almost always go one of two ways: dull and pitiful or breezy and fun. If last year's The Shallows was an example of the latter, 47 Meters Down is an example of the former. Having such a fruitful premise can end up being a completely generic one if those involved don't even try to do anything with it, and this movie happens to be one of the worst movies of 2017 as a result.

It's the type of movie where the characters are breathing pieces of 8.5" by 11" white printer paper. It's the type of writing where someone will start bleeding, the camera will have a close-up of it, and another character will say, "You're bleeding!" It's the type of directing where endless close-ups and slow motion are used in leu of tension and make it difficult to tell what's happening and where.

It's the type of pacing where the script spends minutes upon minutes on something that should take 30 second because more time always equals more tension. It's all of this for a very boring and very stupid 89 minutes, and yes, it's all of what you would expect from a company that's actually called Entertainment Studios.

Lisa and Kate (Mandy Moore and Claire Holt) are sisters on vacation in an unspecified part of Mexico. Lisa's boyfriend has just dumped her for being boring, and while hanging out at their resort, the two run into two guys who just so happen to run a shady scuba operation where people can sit in a submerged cage around sharks after throwing blood and chum into the water.

Naturally this sounds like a brilliant idea to them, and with the hopes of making her ex jealous of her fun vacation, Lisa decides to join Kate. With the help of one Captain Taylor (Matthew Modine, and yes, the one from Full Metal Jacket), they go on the excursion, but the cable mechanisms fail and the two tourists get stuck on the ocean floor with a limited amount of air and many provoked sharks.

That's right-this happens because a 20-something went scuba diving with sharks to make her ex jealous, and it's all just as stupid as you would expect. The movie has no sense of humor or self-awareness in the slightest, instead taking itself deadly seriously for the entirety of its runtime.

When these characters are as stupid as they are and the movie sees nothing silly about their lack of intellect, it makes the movie itself just as dumb, and many choices feel outright awkward and maybe even a little condescending in how annoying they quickly become.

Lisa and Kate narrate everything that they do, and their actions are fully contingent on whatever plot contrivance the screenwriters feel the need to throw in in order to drag the movie out to feature length.

Director/co-writer Johannes Roberts and co-writer Ernest Riera display no sense of cohesion or clarity in their work, and the ending makes what preceded it even more null and void. The film's "twist" is telegraphed through dialogue in act two and I figured that the filmmakers wouldn't resort to trying to pull such a cheap trick on their viewers, but alas, the cherry placed on top of this melted sundae proves the lack of care evermore, and quite frankly, it shocks me that it took more than half a person to write this, let alone two.

As a director, Roberts exemplifies similar issues. He mistakes boredom for tension in his use of slow motion and drawn-out set pieces that, while already incredibly simplistic, are shot and edited within a centimeter of their lives.

Close-ups are used at every opportunity and when paired with the choppy edited, I largely had no sense of space or tension. The entire movie somehow manages to be both a hyperactive clusterfuck and a stagnant, boring ordeal.

I can't quite judge the performances here since the actors truly have nothing to do other than thrash around and verbalize their actions, but I can say that they don't bring life to what they're given.

But to be fair, you can't successfully perform CPR on a child that's already been confirmed dead for an hour. 47 Meters Down is kind of interesting in its cheapness, like a SyFy original movie from 2004 somehow getting a wide theatrical release with the Weinstein brothers' names on it.

In fact, I was thinking about just how cheap and lame it all felt when I wasn't either checking how much longer there was left or audibly laughing at unintentional stupidity of it all. It was, however, a time when everyone in the theater was dead silent the entire time and then left right when the credits started rolling, which, for a thriller released in summertime, is pretty universally damning.

Oh well, Entertainment Studios. 2.6/10, horrendous, D, worse than bad, etc.