47 Meters Down

Take two girls alone on a boat with a group of men, some of whom are strange-seeming, and the audience is already nervous. Coupled with the rusty cage hanging from the back of an old fishing boat with the words “Puerto de La Paz”, ironically translating to “Port of Peace”, written on the side, disaster is predictably imminent.

The pair, holidaying in Mexico, are an archetypal sibling duo: Kate (Claire Holt) is adventurous and gets all the boys and Lisa (Mandy Moore) plays it safe. Recently heartbroken from a breakup with a man who told her he was “bored”, Lisa is persuaded by her sister to do something daring, ie get into a cage that plummets 47 meters to the seabed when the winch mechanism breaks. This set up, nevertheless, has the tendency to become clichéd, considering it is what drives the motives of both characters. The movie begins with some blatant foreshadowing, like a glass of red wine falling into a pool in which the sisters are swimming.

But while clichéd and a situation we have seen time and time again in thriller/horrors, 47 Meters Down tries and somewhat makes up for it with unbearable suspense and a looming feeling of claustrophobic hopelessness. Trapped with a limited air supply and circled by great white sharks, the girls fight for survival, conserving their oxygen and avoiding the sharks, neither of which they succeed in.

The movie is littered with predictability and questionable decisions that have viewers thinking: “I wouldn’t do that”. But being a popcorn film, it succeeds in its purpose – to terrify and to give its audience the adrenaline rush they search for. 47 Meters Down is a fun one hour and 29 minutes of nonstop terror, and although it does not possess the maturity of deep sea films such as Sanctum and The Abyss, it adequately portrays the vulnerability of human life down in the ocean depths. 

Olivia Cal

47 Meters Down is released in selected cinemas on 28^th July 2017.

Watch the trailer for 47 Meters Down here: