47 Metres Down: Uncaged (2019) - Movie Review

Well, after the success of the first 47 Metres Down movie, which was easily one of the most unnecessary features I reviewed in the entirety of 2017, it appears we already have a sequel. Knowing what other unneeded horror cinema have been getting follow-ups (a sequel to The Gallows came out this year; I mean, c’mon!) I should be more irritated at this film’s mere existence… but maybe this could be a good thing.

As I’ve been making a habit of saying around here, I love movies that redeem qualities of bad movies, and while I was largely unimpressed with the first film, it’s not as if it had literally nothing about it that could’ve worked with a different take. Hell, with how well Crawl turned out earlier this year, I’m willing to go into this with some level of optimism. Thankfully, this may not be all that good of a film, but it is markedly better than its predecessor.

For a start, there’s no Mandy Moore to deal with this time around. The main group of actors aren’t exactly magnetising in their performances (even John Corbett, who managed to make a God’s Not Dead sequel watchable, doesn’t turn out too well here), but at least they seem to give a shit about their circumstances in and out of the film’s universe. It may start on a tepid, high-school-bully note, but as impetus for Sophie Nélisse’s Mia and her character arc (plain as it admittedly is), it gives the plot a reason to be looked at.

For another, the visuals are drastically improved. The CG work on the sharks still sucks when the camera gets too good of a look at them, but in trying to re-do the ‘what we can’t see is scarier’ tone of the original, it works a hell of a lot better. It manages a decent balance in obscuring the imagery, usually with use of silt in the water, while still allowing the audience to see what’s actually on-screen. Its use of colour is pretty cool as well, merging yellows, greens and blues to give an almost preternatural feel to the sunken Mayan city that serves as the main setting for the underwater action. It hits a weird note once it emphasises the red of an emergency signal, combining with Martin Brinkler’s editing and Tomandandy’s soundtrack to look like pure trailer-bait, but otherwise, it looks decent.

How about the horror? Well, this is where some of the bigger issues with the original resurface, as there are some definite try-hard attempts at scares here. It leans pretty hard on soundtrack stings to punctuate the appearance of the sharks, which only makes the quieter instances all the more appreciated in comparison, and the film ends up overdosing in the finale with how many jump scares it squeezes into a single scene.

But while it has some teething problems, in terms of creating and maintaining tension, it gets the job done more times than not. The eerie stillness of the sunken city along with the introduction of blind sharks, giving this an aquatic Don’t Breathe vibe, and the titular lack of a diving cage show not only a degree of creativity but the ability to utilise it properly as well. Far better than the cock-tease of nitrogen narcosis we got last time, at the very least.

Now, with all that said, this film still isn’t all that great. Its writing is still thin, compounded by how much of the plot relies on the characters doing rock-stupid things, its atmosphere isn’t as taut as it needed to be for a film under 90 minutes long, and the CG work on the main threat of the story is still very distracting. But for those itching for more underwater creature features, and if these movies are going to be so successful that they’ll get sequels regardless of actual merit, I’m glad that there’s some improvement shown here.