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...
CLOSE (UK/Ireland - 2019) Directed by Vicky Jewson. Written by Vicky Jewson and Rupert Whitaker. Cast: Noomi Rapace, Sophie Nelisse, Indira Varma, Eoin Macken, Abdesslam Bouhssini, George Georgiu, Christopher Sciuref, Akin Gazi, Kevin Shen, Sargon Yelda, Huw Parmenter. (Unrated, 94 mins) To fans of foreign cinema, Noomi Rapace will forever be known as the original Lisbeth Salander in the Scandinavian adaptation of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and its two sequels. The films were big enough arthouse hits in the US that Rapace moved on to Hollywood, co-starring in SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS and headlining Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS, but she never quite made it on the A-list with smaller films like DEAD MAN DOWN, Brian De Palma's PASSION, and THE DROP. Unless you follow Netflix Original or straight-to-VOD genre offerings, Rapace has likely fallen off the radar a bit with mainstream moviegoers. But since 2017, she's been very quietly establishing herself as a go-to star of action and/or sci-fi fare with 2017's not-bad terrorism thriller UNLOCKED and turning in seven convincing performances as septuplets in Netflix's solid future dystopia saga WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY (plus there was RUPTURE, which wasn't very good, but she's great in it, and she emerged unscathed from Netflix's dismal Will Smith dud BRIGHT). Rapace is back in another Netflix Original film with the British pickup CLOSE, and while it doesn't exactly break new ground, it's further evidence that she's deserving of her own BOURNE-style action franchise.
After barely surviving a skirmish with insurgents where she's assigned to protect two members of the media in a Middle East war zone, freelance counter-terrorism expert and bodyguard Sam Carlson (Rapace) is in no hurry to accept another gig. But she's pressed into service to protect Zoe Tanner (Sophie Nelisse of THE BOOK THIEF), a spoiled teenage party girl whose billionaire father has just died and left her the majority of the shares of his Morocco-based mining company. Troubled by her mother's suicide when she was ten and with a history of drug and alcohol abuse, Zoe doesn't get along with her stepmother Rima (Indira Varma), who plans to contest her late husband's will. She sends Zoe from their British castle to the family compound in the outskirts of Casablanca, in the process getting rid of her friends-with-benefits male bodyguard and insisting her security detail "find one she can't fuck." This leads to Sam, and while neither of them are happy about the arrangement, Sam does the job she's paid to do. Once they're in Morocco, a team of hired killers raid the compound, taking out the entire security team and sending Sam and Zoe on the run.
Directed and co-written by Vicky Jewson, CLOSE doesn't exactly bring anything new to the table in terms of story or style, but it's nice to see a tough, ass-kicking action movie made by and starring women. It's essentially a rehash of THE TRANSPORTER and THE EQUALIZER revamped for Rapace, who just terrific as a stoical woman of few words who's as lethal as any Damon, Statham, or Diesel. Of course, Sam and Zoe are like oil and water from the start but inevitably bond, but the attempt to show Sam's maternal side could've been conveyed without shoehorning in a hackneyed subplot about a daughter she gave up for adoption years ago, though I suppose every lone wolf action hero has to have some tragedy or secret in their past that still haunts them. Nelisse does a good job making a real character out of someone who could've been a one-dimensional caricature, but the gravity of the situation hits Zoe in a credible fashion and she quickly learns to cut the shit and grow up. The finale seems a little too rushed and contrived, like they wanted to avoid making the culprit obvious, but it was a twist that was unnecessary and doesn't seem entirely credible given the character's demeanor up to that point. But on the whole, CLOSE is definitely worth checking out. It's relentlessly-paced and compelling from start to finish, with good chemistry between the leads and a furious, intense performance from Rapace.
