47 Metres Down ain’t no Sharknado
A SHORT, sharp and schlocky shark-attack thriller, 47 Metres Down won’t be winning any awards for originality.
However, in terms of persuading us to consider cancelling all seaside holidays until further notice, a jolting job is quite well done.
Mandy Moore and Claire Holt play Lisa and Kate, American sisters who appear to have booked their Mexican vacation with the same travel agent Blake Lively must have used in last year’s narky-sharky
box-office hit The Shallows.
The ladies’ good times swiftly plummet to unexpectedly bad depths when an underwater sightseeing mishap leaves them trapped inside a rusty cage on the ocean floor.
Their air supplies will soon be running out. Some humungous killer sharks will soon be closing in.
Just as character backstories are kept to a bare minimum — Kate is the sensible one with rudimentary diving experience, Lisa is the panicky one who just broke up with her boyfriend — so too are the plotting logistics framing this life-or-death situation.
Help is just out of radio range. The girls have to get out of the cage to receive rescue updates from the dodgy sailor that dropped them in the drink in the first place.
His name is Captain Taylor (Matthew Modine), and all you need to know about him is that he owns two sets of the weakest winching cables on the high seas.
Oh, and if you’re wondering why Lisa and Kate can’t just make a rapid swim for it upwards when the coast is clear, there’s the killer curse of the bends preventing that. To ascend to the surface, they will have to make regular stops along the way.
Not a good idea when there’s a bunch of famished sharks the size of school buses ready to pounce.