47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED (US/UK - 2019) Directed by Johannes Roberts. Written by Johannes Roberts and Ernest Riera. Cast: Sophie Nelisse, Corinne Foxx, Brianne Tju, Sistine Stallone, John Corbett, Nia Long, Davi Santos, Khylin Rhambo, Brec Bassinger. (PG-13, 90 mins) Rescued from straight-to-DVD oblivion just a week before hitting retailers in 2016 under the title IN THE DEEP and released in theaters a year later, 47 METERS DOWN proved to be a surprise summer 2017 hit for the upstart Entertainment Studios, who bought the film from a cash-strapped Dimension Films when the latter didn't see any potential in it. That was just before THE SHALLOWS ended up being a sleeper success in 2016, convincing Entertainment Studios CEO and veteran comedian Byron Allen that this cheap acquisition was a smart investment. He was right, but 47 METERS DOWN has been the only thing keeping Entertainment Studios afloat after a string of box-office duds, including the terrible German-made social media horror pickup FRIEND REQUEST, the ridiculous THE HURRICANE HEIST, and the godawful Keanu Reeves sci-fi thriller REPLICAS (HOSTILES and CHAPPAQUIDDICK got good reviews, but played to mostly empty theaters). 47 METERS DOWN was an accidental hit for the hapless Allen. Nobody needed a sequel but desperate times call for desperate measures. And for our sins, we've got 47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED.
Director and co-writer Johannes Roberts returns, and to his credit, there's no idiotic twist ending like the one that completely ruined its predecessor and sent a palpable wave of resentment rippling across the theater. Roberts has yet to make an all-around front-to-back good movie, but he has his moments, as anyone who saw last year's THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT can attest. A largely by-the-numbers reboot/sequel to the 2008 hit, THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT is pretty forgettable except for a standout scene at a swimming pool that makes brilliant use of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." It's an instant classic sequence that's masterfully assembled and uses sight and sound so effectively that it's almost enough to trick you into thinking the movie is better than it is. Roberts tries that same technique again here, with a long tracking shot through a narrow underwater cave that uses Roxette's "The Look" before segueing into an eerie cover of the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." It's not quite as effective as Bonnie Tyler, but this seems to be Roberts' schtick (Status Quo and Aztec Camera also make needle-drop appearances). No cast members from 47 METERS DOWN return, though there is a shot of a school named "Modine International School for Girls," likely included as a wink-and-a-nod to Matthew Modine, who got a free vacation to the Dominican Republic by taking a small role in the first film.
Set in a posh, scenic resort town in the Yucatan Peninsula, UNCAGED opens with teenage Mia (Sophie Nelisse) being bullied by some mean girls and getting no help from her stepsister Sasha (Corinne Foxx, Jamie's daughter). They've both been relocated after their parents--Mia's dad Grant (John Corbett) and Sasha's mom Jennifer (Nia Long)--have gotten married and marine archaeologist Grant has a long-term job opening up a long-hidden cave system housed in the ruins of an ancient Mayan city that's been underwater for centuries. Sasha talks Mia into bailing on a glass-bottom boat tour of the area to head to a secret cove with Sasha's besties Alexa (Brianne Tju) and Nicole (a debuting Sistine Stallone, Sly's daughter), where Grant and his two research assistants have conveniently left some diving equipment. They decide to just explore the first cave and head back up, but as soon as someone says "What's that?" and ventures off on their own, their fate is sealed. The girls are soon joined by a screaming fish (don't ask) and then by a blind, albino great white shark, part of an undiscovered species that's spent centuries evolving in total darkness...that is, until Grant opened up a cave and they got through. Sightless but with every other sense heightened, the shark is joined by others, repeatedly sneaking up on and cornering the girls into tight spots in caves and rock formations, and stirring up enough silt that they're pretty much as blind as the sharks when it comes to finding a way out. And their oxygen tanks are running low...
47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED is a lesson in stupidity and poor decision-making, starting with no one thinking to use a guide line, but the rest is mostly on the part of Stallone's Nicole. She's the one who dismisses safe diving protocols, she's the one who sees something mysterious and swims toward it, she's the one who knocks over a large totem and stirs up all the silt, and she's the one whose selfishness and frantic impatience end up making the situation worse and leading to the deaths of two more people, so much so that her fate actually serves as a crowd-pleasing moment. The concept of the uncovered city and the cave system make for an appropriately creepy setting, but it eventually becomes impossible to tell what's going on, with one sequence such a dark blur that it's several minutes before you can even ascertain who just got killed. What this really is at the end of the day is a JAWS-inspired retread of Neil Marshall's THE DESCENT. The ghostly-white albino sharks probably sounded good on paper, but poor CGI renders them lacking in onscreen execution, and Roberts shows absolutely no shame in blatantly cribbing the most memorable scene in the 20-year-old DEEP BLUE SEA when a potential savior is taken out right in the middle of his inspirational speech. On the basis of it not having a completely, infuriatingly shitheaded twist ending, 47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED might be an ever-so-slight improvementover its predecessor, but it's still the kind of disposable, streaming-ready B-movie that you won't even remember by the time you get to the parking lot. However, Roxette is still stuck in my head...
REPLICAS (US/UK/China - 2019) Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff. Written by Chad St. John. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alice Eve, Thomas Middleditch, John Ortiz, Nyasha Hatendi, Aria Leabu, Emily Alyn Lind, Emjay Anthony, Amber Rivera. (PG-13, 107 mins) Or, HONEY, I CLONED THE FAMILY.
The sci-fi pastiche REPLICAS arrives in theaters in the second week of 2019 adorned with all the tell-tale signs of an ignominious January dump-job that should've gone straight-to-VOD: multiple bumped release dates after playing everywhere else in the world last fall; a 2017 copyright; bush-league CGI that can charitably be described as "unfinished;" a script that's a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas shamelessly stolen from at least a half-dozen other, better movies; and a slumming star who seems mildly irritated that his paid vacation is being interrupted by work. Filmed way back in 2016 in a pre-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico, REPLICAS stars Keanu Reeves as Dr. William Foster, a scientist working for Bionyne, a top secret research facility in San Juan, where he moved his family after securing funding for his life's work: perfecting the transfer of neural energy and memories of the recently dead into "artificial" androids that look suspiciously like Sonny, the title character from I, ROBOT. The results haven't been promising thus far--every time an android wakes to find themselves in a new robotic body, they freak out and tear themselves to pieces. Foster's bottom-line, profit-obsessed boss Jones (John Ortiz) tells him the clock is ticking for results but, like all movie scientists in these situations, Foster insists he's "this close" to success. Work concerns don't stop him from taking a trip with the family--his wife Mona (Alice Eve), teenage daughter Sophie (Emily Alyn Lind), son Matt (Emjay Anthony), and young daughter Zoe (Aria Leabu)--and as soon as Mona says "Maybe we should pull over" during a torrential downpour on a dark, twisty road, they crash into the ocean and everyone is killed except for Foster.
The Asylum presents
Keanu Reeves in MINORITY REPORTS.
Giving it little thought, Foster calls Ed (the perpetually grating Thomas Middleditch of HBO's SILICON VALLEY and entirely too many Verizon TV commercials), a Bionyne colleague who's working on human cloning. Ed meets him at the scene of the accident and, with little convincing, goes along with Foster's risky plan to upload the neural energy of his dead family and use Ed's cloning techniques to fashion new, synthetic human bodies for them like nothing ever happened (at this point, you may wonder why, if Ed can create human-looking bodies, Foster wasting his time with robotic, herky-jerky androids, but then you'd be putting more thought into REPLICAS than the filmmakers did). To do so requires massive, water-filled pods that cost $1 million a piece, but Ed somehow manages to swipe them from Bionyne with nobody noticing. Ed only has three pods, so Foster picks a name out of a bowl to make the SOPHIE'S CHOICE decision of who doesn't get cloned. It's Zoe, which also requires that he tweak the program to erase all memories of her from the rest of the family. Per Ed's instructions, they have to incubate in the pods for exactly 17 days and a backup generator is required because the pods can't be without power for more then seven seconds. No problem, as Foster finds an impromptu backup power source for his basement lab by stealing about 20 batteries from all the parked cars in the neighborhood and the cops don't seem to think it's weird that his SUV was the only vehicle whose battery hasn't gone mysteriously missing. Of course the family is "reborn." Of course they're confused and awkward and gradually start having flashes of their past memories. And of course, an irate Jones comes sniffing around after Foster goes absent at work for long stretches as he finds it increasingly difficult to keep his activities secret from both his family and Bionyne.
Reeves either executing the memory cortex
or initiating the neural implant.
REPLICAS is such an utterly incoherent, illogical mess that it makes TRANSCENDENCE look good. How exactly does Foster intend to sell the idea of Zoe never existing to, oh, I dunno, everyone who knows the family? Its idea of science is just to have Reeves blurt out of bunch of gobbledygook exposition that a) his research team should already know, and b) is ultimately just him gravely and unconvincingly blurting Philip K. Dipshit-sounding buzzwords like "Stasis modality!" and "Execute the memory cortex!" and "Initiate the neural implant!" while he dons a virtual reality headset and starts emphatically conducting a symphony in front of a MINORITY REPORT holographic screen to transfer the memory and brain energy, which, when it finally occurs, looks about as complicated as downloading a song from iTunes. The details are inconsequential, and so is everything else, especially after numerous nonsensical plot turns where it seems the filmmakers--Jeffrey Nachmanoff, a busy TV director helming his first feature since 2008's TRAITOR, and LONDON HAS FALLEN co-writer Chad St. John--aren't even paying attention to their own movie. Some of the gaping plot holes might be by design, but the third act is so rushed, disjointed and thrown-together that I'm still not sure what happened, other than Foster implanting his memory into an I, ROBOT android as both Keanu and a RoboKeanu take on Jones' goons, which might be fun if we had any clue why the hell it was even happening.
I, RIPOFF
Reeves is sleepwalking through this, though one can hardly blame him. Between this and VOD duds like EXPOSED, THE WHOLE TRUTH, THE BAD BATCH, and SIBERIA, it's clear that the JOHN WICK franchise is the only thing keeping him from forming an unholy alliance with John Cusack and Bruce Willis('s double) at your nearest Redbox kiosk. There's so many directions this could've gone and been a much more interesting, entertaining film. Reeves can't even muster a "Whoa!" but someone like Nicolas Cage would've recognized the absurdity of the premise and brought a manic, batshit energy that would've done a lot to sell it, especially the scenes where Foster has to keep up the ruse that his family is still alive, texting his kids' friends and e-mailing the principal to tell them they've decided to homeschool. Another more interesting idea would've been to have Mona and the kids already be cloned replicas and then gradually find out as the film goes on. Instead it winds up as a BLACK MIRROR episode that might as well be titled I, MINORITY RECALL. REPLICAS swipes so much from other movies and TV shows that you can't fault its upfront honesty with its truth-in-advertising title. It also feels like it was frozen in 2002 and just now thawed out by comedian Byron Allen's dubiously-monikered Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures, a company that would've been the next Freestyle Releasing were it not for them having an accidental hit with the Weinstein cast-off 47 METERS DOWN. Allen specializes in acquiring long-shelved lost causes and somehow releasing them on 2500 screens, and while he accidentally stumbled on a good movie with 2017's underappreciated HOSTILES, blind luck can't be a sustainable business model, and with barely-VOD-worthy duds like FRIEND REQUEST, THE HURRICANE HEIST, and now REPLICAS, it's hard telling how much longer he's gonna be able to keep the lights on. Oh, wait. 47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED is out this summer.
HOSTILES (US - 2017) Written and directed by Scott Cooper. Cast: Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Ben Foster, Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, Adam Beach, Stephen Lang, Scott Wilson, Timothee Chalamet, Q'orianka Kilcher, Peter Mullan, Jonathan Majors, Bill Camp, Paul Anderson, Ryan Bingham, Tanaya Beatty, Xavier Horsechief, John Benjamin Hickey, David Midthunder, Robyn Malcolm, Boots Southerland, Scott Shepherd. (R, 135 mins) Based on an unpublished novel written by veteran screenwriter Donald E. Stewart (JACKSON COUNTY JAIL, MISSING, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER) way back in the 1980s (Stewart died in 1999, but still gets an executive producer credit here), HOSTILES is a western that works despite being torn between revisionism and genre standards. Written and directed by Scott Cooper (CRAZY HEART), HOSTILES reunites the filmmaker with his OUT OF THE FURNACE star Christian Bale, and while it has moments that aspire to the likes of pre-self-parody Terrence Malick and something like Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN (even stealing the "killed everything that's walked or crawled" line) or Andrew Dominik's THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, it ultimately leans more toward the OPEN RANGE and the remake of 3:10 TO YUMA side of things. And there's nothing wrong with that because those were fine westerns, and while the languid pacing likely won't bother fans of revisionist westerns, the more commercial, mainstream moviegoers may get a little fidgety. HOSTILES was acquired by Byron Allen's upstart Entertainment Studios, and after the surprise summer hit 47 METERS DOWN and last fall's social media bomb FRIEND REQUEST, Allen clearly intended HOSTILES to be his ticket to the Oscars. It was given a limited rollout at Christmas 2017 and finally expanded nationwide a month later, but it was all for naught. It's a very good movie, probably Cooper's most accomplished yet (and a nice rebound from the disappointing BLACK MASS, the Whitey Bulger biopic starring a pair of ice blue contact lenses resting on the corneas of Johnny Depp), but it obviously didn't connect with the Academy, netting a grand total of zero nominations.
A veteran of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, about-to-retire US Army Capt. Joseph Blocker (Bale) is a respected leader with no love for Native Americans, viewing them as "savages" and "animals." He's assigned by his commander (Stephen Lang), under orders from President Benjamin Harrison, to lead a military escort for imprisoned tribal chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family from New Mexico back to his tribal land in Montana. Yellow Hawk has cancer and his days are numbered, and as a goodwill gesture, the President has granted the aging chief's final wish to die and be buried on his land. Having faced Yellow Hawk in battle and losing several men under his command to him, Blocker initially refuses the order until he's threatened with a court-martial and the loss of his pension. Blocker is accompanied by the most trusted soldiers under his command--Sgt. Metz (Rory Cochrane) and Major Woodson (Jonathan Majors)--along with West Point graduate Lt. Kidder (Jesse Plemons), and fresh-faced, French-born rookie Pvt. DeJardin (Timothee Chalamet). As soon as they're far enough from the base, bitter Blocker drops the niceties, grabs a pair of knives and challenges Yellow Hawk to a fight, only to be stoically rebuffed when the chief tells him he isn't afraid of death. Instead, Blocker orders Yellow Hawk and his family--son Black Hawk (Adam Beach), daughter-in-law Elk Woman (Q'orianka Kilcher), grandson Little Bear (Xavier Horsechief), and daughter Living Woman (Tanaya Beatty) to be chained for the duration of the trip. Shortly into the journey, they encounter shell-shocked widow Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), who just saw her husband scalped and three children murdered by Comanche warriors in an almost unbearably grim and brutal opening sequence. Rosalie joins them, and with those Comanches still in the vicinity, Blocker is ultimately forced to accept the help of sworn enemy Yellow Hawk, and that's before things get even more complicated when a stop at the next military outpost results in them adding three additional members to the party--two officers escorting Sgt. Wills (Ben Foster), a prisoner due for execution who, conveniently enough, used to be under Blocker's command.
There's no shortage of formulaic elements to HOSTILES, starting with the "one last job" motif as Blocker is set to retire once he's finished escorting Yellow Hawk to his tribal land. And, of course, they're determined to make it there if they don't kill each other first! But there's some interesting character development throughout, primarily with the arc of Bale's Blocker. It's obvious that he and Yellow Hawk will come around to reaching a mutual respect with the understanding that battle was battle, that was then and this is now. But the soldiers accompanying Blocker ultimately symbolize the stages of that arc, with DeJardin representing the youthful naivete of a young Blocker before experiencing the horrors of war; the ruthless, racist Wills serving as Blocker's dark side, reminding him of what a vicious killer of "redskins" he used to be; upstanding and loyal Woodson demonstrating his capacity for empathy; and Metz exemplifying the ability to change and recognize and correct the errors of the past. Metz starts out reminiscing about the good old days of scalping "savages" but he's the first to give a peace offering to Yellow Hawk on the journey and apologize for the things that happened to him and his people. Granted, Metz's abrupt come-to-Jesus moment is one of the film's missteps, handled in a clumsily heavy-handed and melodramatic way by Cooper. The fleshing out of Bale's character does come at the expense of Pike's, who's endured an inconceivable tragedy yet her stages of grief are given somewhat of a short shrift. Still, at the end of the day, these are minor quibbles for an overall excellent film that runs the gamut from some truly stomach-turning violence to powerful moments of genuine heartbreak and emotion. It's got a terrific cast of character actor ringers (Studi can play this kind of role in his sleep, but he does it better than anyone), beautiful imagery from cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi (THE GREY), and some nicely complex characterizations that help elevate the film's more cookie-cutter elements into something a little more ambitious.
A sleeper hit from the Blumhouse assembly line, HAPPY DEATH DAY is essentially a slasher spin on GROUNDHOG DAY with elements of MEAN GIRLS and, to a certain extent, Lucio Fulci's THE PSYCHIC. Bitchy, self-absorbed sorority girl Tree (Jessica Rothe) wakes up hungover in the dorm of nice guy Carter (Israel Broussard) after a night of partying, only to go about her day and be killed by a masked maniac on the way to the party her sorority sisters are throwing for her. She relives the time loop day after day and initially can't even, but she eventually uses the repetition and the learned responses to team with Carter--who never remembers the events of the last time loop--to figure out the identity and motive of her killer. There's no shortage of suspects since Tree is a truly horrible person--she's completely dismissive of her nice roommate Lori (Ruby Modine, Matthew's daughter), slept with sorority sister Danielle's (Rachel Matthews) douchebag boyfriend (Blaine Kern III), and is having a casual fling with a married professor (Charles Aitken). She's also been distant toward her concerned dad (Jason Bayle) since her mom's death on her birthday three years earlier. Directed by PARANORMAL ACTIVITY vet Christopher Landon, HAPPY DEATH DAY was stuck in development hell for a decade, originally given the green light back in 2007 with Megan Fox in the lead. Uncanny X-Men comic book scribe Scott Lobdell is the credited screenwriter, though Landon did an almost complete overhaul of the original script. It's got some clever ideas and a few scattered bits of sharp humor, and though some of its twists are a little hokey, it's entertaining and better than it has any business being. A lot of this is due to a terrific performance by Rothe, who's very believable handling Tree's gradual transformation from a cruel, cold-hearted bitch to a sympathetic heroine forced to relive various methods of being murdered at the end of every day and using it to make herself a better person. Budgeted at just $4 million, HAPPY DEATH DAY opened big but took a tumble its second week, still far surpassing its cost and probably on its way to being another Blumhouse franchise. It's no classic by any means, but there's some effective chills throughout, particularly the unnerving mask worn by the very driven killer, and the versatile, appealing Rothe (who had a supporting role as one of Emma Stone's friends in LA LA LAND) definitely has some star potential. (PG-13, 96 mins)
FRIEND REQUEST
(Germany/South Africa - 2017)
2015's real-time social media/Skypesploitation horror film UNFRIENDED was no masterpiece, but it was surprisingly compelling and managed to stick to its gimmicky conceit without blowing it. The similarly social media-based FRIEND REQUEST, on the other hand, is a tired and uninspired mess that's more or less a Facebook version of THE RING. Shot in 2014 under the title UNFRIEND, the German/South African co-production FRIEND REQUEST was released by Warner Bros in Europe in 2016, but they wisely declined to distribute it in the US. They instead pawned it off on the lowly Freestyle Releasing, who had a trailer in theaters a couple of years ago and then...nothing. Freestyle ended up being acquired by comedian and former talk show host Byron Allen's upstart Entertainment Studios, who enjoyed an unexpected sleeper summer hit after picking up the Weinstein castoff 47 METERS DOWN. Blind luck isn't a reliable sales model, and lightning failed to strike twice. Audiences flatly rejected FRIEND REQUEST, which Allen hubristically rolled out on almost 2600 screens even though it had been readily available on torrent sites for over a year. It promptly crashed and burned with what's presently the ninth-worst wide release opening ever. Shot in South Africa but set in an anonymous American college town, FRIEND REQUEST has social media-addicted student Laura (FEAR THE WALKING DEAD's Alycia Debnam-Carey) getting a friend request from Marina (Lisel Ahlers), a quiet, goth outcast who sits in the back corner of her psych class. Marina is shy and has no friends, and Laura doesn't see the harm in being friendly acquaintances with her. Of course, Marina immediately bombards Laura with posts, messages, and texts, and Marina loses it when she isn't invited with Laura's other friends to a birthday dinner being thrown by her boyfriend Tyler (William Moseley from the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA movies). A physical confrontation in the dining hall ultimately leads to Marina committing suicide by simultaneously hanging herself and setting herself on fire and posting the video on Facebook. The university removes the suicide video but it keeps reposting on Laura's timeline and any attempts to delete it only get a prompt reading "Unknown Error," which may have been a better title for the script.
Needless to say, Marina's vengeful ghost is haunting Laura via Facebook, also posting the video on the timelines of all of her friends and making it impossible to delete it or their accounts. Marina's ghost starts spontaneously friending all of Laura's friends, which leads to their grisly deaths--by throat slashing, CGI wasp attack, and random Blumhouse ripoff jump scares. Even as people start turning up dead, Tyler's biggest concern is how much time Laura's spending with her platonic friend and computer whiz/code expert Kobe (Connor Paolo) as they try to figure out how Marina is haunting their social media feeds. Directed and co-written by Simon Verhoeven (no relation to Paul but the son of THE NASTY GIRL director Michael Verhoeven and 1960s actress Senta Berger), FRIEND REQUEST is a boring and brazenly idiotic snoozer filled with vacuous characters and almost every post-RINGU/JU-ON cliche imaginable (consider it a small victory that Marina doesn't manifest herself doing the herky-jerky J-Horror shuffle). The door is inevitably left open for a sequel, but you'd be wise to ignore, delete, and block anything related to FRIEND REQUEST. (R, 92 mins)
47 METERS DOWN (UK/Dominican Republic - 2017) Directed by Johannes Roberts. Written by Johannes Roberts and Ernest Riera. Cast: Claire Holt, Mandy Moore, Matthew Modine, Santiago Segura, Chris J. Johnson, Yani Gellman. (PG-13, 89 mins)
Opening almost exactly one year after last summer's better-than-expected Blake Lively shark attack thriller THE SHALLOWS, 47 METERS DOWN had an unusual journey to the big screen. Shot in 2015 as 47 METERS DOWN, the British/Dominican Republic co-production was acquired by Dimension Films, who retitled it IN THE DEEP and planned on releasing it straight-to-DVD/Blu-ray in August 2016, probably figuring it could fool less-savvy Redbox customers and Walmart and Best Buy impulse buyers into thinking it was THE SHALLOWS. A week before the planned street date, Dimension abruptly cancelled the release after closing a deal to sell the film to the upstart Entertainment Studios, a TV production company looking to branch out into movie distribution and owned by none other than veteran comedian and syndicated talk show host Byron Allen, last seen hosting COMICS UNLEASHED when you woke up at 3:30 am and realized you left the TV on. Allen reinstated the 47 METERS DOWN title, gave himself an executive producer credit (he's one of 38 credited producers), and sat on the film for nearly a year before making it Entertainment Studios' inaugural multiplex offering. Review copies of IN THE DEEP had already been sent to media outlets and DVD/Blu-ray shipments had already arrived at stores the week before the August 2016 release date. Dimension recalled the shipments, but certain retailers--Target, in particular--broke the street date, so a handful of physical copies, under its interim IN THE DEEP title, were inevitably sold and have since turned up on eBay as collector's items, even though the film hasn't officially been released until now. It's good timing on the part of Entertainment Studios: shark movies are perfect summer fare, and while co-star Mandy Moore's movie career wasn't exactly on fire two years ago when this was made (she's not even top-billed), she's enjoyed a significant resurgence thanks to the huge success of the NBC series THIS IS US.
Lisa (Moore) and her younger sister Kate (Australian actress Claire Holt of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES and its spinoff THE ORIGINALS) are vacationing in Mexico, with Kate going along as a last-minute substitute after Lisa got dumped by her longtime boyfriend for being "too boring." The sisters couldn't be more different--outgoing Kate is the life of the party while the more conservative Lisa is overly cautious and hesitant about everything. Kate convinces her big sister to live it up and take a chance after they meet Benjamin (Santiago Segura--not to be confused with the popular Spanish actor of the same name) and Louis (Yani Gellman), a couple of nice local guys who talk them into an off-the-books cage-diving excursion, chartering a boat captained by the Dude-like Taylor (Matthew Modine getting a paid vacation to the Caribbean), who lets tourists go five meters down in a shark cage to get up close and personal with the plentiful number of great whites inhabiting the waters. Benjamin and Louis go in without incident but while Lisa and Kate are in the cage, the cable frays and the boat winch breaks off, sending them to the floor 47 meters down. At a depth too far down to communicate with Taylor on the radio, with limited oxygen, sharks swimming all around the cage, and certain death from the bends even if they get out and try to ascend to the surface too quickly, there's no way out in the amount of time it will take the Coast Guard to mount a deep sea rescue.
Had director/co-writer Johannes Roberts stuck to this simple, intense premise, 47 METERS DOWN would be a front-to-back winner. The score by tomandandy is terrifically effective, the CGI sharks look surprisingly convincing, and Roberts takes a page out of the Spielberg playbook by not showing too much of them. Smart move. It's an exemplary nail-biter with convincing performances from Holt and Moore and for about 2/3 of its running time, it's looking like we might have a new gem in the shark attack subgenre. But that's before Roberts decides things are going just a little too well, forcing him to call a time-out so he can promptly shit the bed. Since the mid-to-late 1990s, when the shocking finales of films like THE USUAL SUSPECTS and THE SIXTH SENSE dazzled audiences (and you could maybe even go back to 1991's SHATTERED to see where the trend really began), third-act twists, no matter how absurd, have been become so commonplace that more often than not, they aren't even surprising anymore. That's not to say good ones don't still happen, but Roberts (STORAGE 24, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR) isn't a skilled enough filmmaker to pull it off. It's telegraphed in a line so verbosely clunky that the only way you could miss it is if you were in the restroom. Why does a shark movie need a twist ending? They're sharks, not Keyser Soze. A good filmmaker executes a twist and leaves the audience buzzing and going back and replaying the events to see how cleverly the plot was constructed and realize just how you were manipulated and played. The twist of 47 METERS DOWN leaves you feeling like you just got your chain yanked for the last 80 minutes and you leave the theater only to find Roberts keying your car. I guess there's a fine line between executing a masterful plot twist and just being a dick, and 47 METERS DOWN has one of those twists where the wave of audience resentment upon its revelation is palpable. And speaking of being a dick, there's no need for the onscreen title of this film to be JOHANNES ROBERTS' 47 METERS DOWN. How much sack does it take for the director of STORAGE 24 to pull that move? Pump your brakes, JoJo. You think you're John Fuckin' Carpenter?
DVD packaging for the cancelled 2016 release of 47 METERS DOWN
