47 Meters Down: Uncaged – Film Review
Four teenage divers discover that the sunken ruins of a Mayan city are also a hunting ground for deadly great white sharks. With their air supply steadily dwindling, the frightened girls must navigate the underwater labyrinth of claustrophobic caves and eerie tunnels in search of a way out of their watery hell.
If you were to tell me two years ago that there was going to be a sequel to the abismally awful 47 Meters Down directed by Johannes Roberts, I would not believe you. Not only was the film a failure with the vast majority of critics, but the film seemingly disappointed audiences as well.
Here we are in the year 2019 and we already have its sequel, subtitled Uncaged with the same director and screenwriter attached to it. Some part of me was optimistic about this follow-up, as I was willing to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt. After seeing that the original did not resonate with critics and audiences alike, I thought that they would most certainly try to shake things up a bit this time around; try to come up with a more investing, gritty story and make the characters more likeable and flesh them out.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)
Sadly, Uncaged follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, with another batch of frustrating characters that make ridiculously dumb decisions, an extremely familiar and trope-ridden story, and moments that make absolutely no sense whatsoever and instead come off as funny.
All of the characters here feel so disposable. The film has zero interest in fleshing them out and making them compelling. In fact, if all of the lead protagonists were to die half an hour into the film or something like that, it would not be maddening at all. This is drastically disappointing, though. I legitamately wanted to go and see this movie and walk out of it saying that it was surprisingly good and better than expected, but it sadly is not.
As aforementioned, this movie is completely littered with things that make no sense at all and come across as unintentionally hilarious. By far one of the biggest examples of this here, is the way in which our main characters interact with one another throughout the course of the film. As practically the whole picture takes place underwater, you would think that communication would be impossible between the characters. However, we constantly see our leads having conversations with each other while they are underwater. If this were real, and you tried to talk to somebody while submerged in water, everything would sound muffled and inaudible. It would have been at least something had the film explained that the characters are wearing ear pieces or some sort of device in their ears that allows them to communicate, but they never once show anything like that or mention it.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)
There is one sequence in particular however, that is insanely awful yet so hilarious at the same time that it was honestly hard to stifle laughter once I viewed it for the first time. This moment in question involves a shark that literally makes a screaming sound from its mouth. The last time I checked, sharks did not have vocal cords, and even if they did, there is no way real life sharks would be able to make the sound that the one in this movie does.
To finish, it is quite a boring movie to look at too. Besides from the obvious plot and storyline being a drag to sit through, the cinematography is just plain bad here, shot by Mark Silk. It is nearly impossible to see what is going on in certain scenes due to the lighting being incredibly dark and therefore it is hard to be invested on what is transpiring on screen.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged follows the same trope-ridden plotlines of the first, with yet another batch of annoying characters, nonsensical moments, and weak cinematography.
Overall Grade: F
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense peril, bloody images, and brief strong language
Cast: Sophie Nélisse, Corinne Foxx, Brianne Tju, Sistine Stallone, Davi Santos, Khylin Rhambo, Brec Bassinger, John Corbett
Directed by: Johannes Roberts
Distributed by: Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures
Running Time: 89 minutes