47 Meters Down: Uncaged

Prequel: “47 Meters Down” (2017)

Since “Jaws” first terrorized audiences, shark thrillers have thrust foolish humans into the gaping jaws of great white sharks with a real-world impact. “Jaws” inspired an unfortunate mass killing spree on great white sharks which has taken decades to recover from; though they are often “villains” in movies, great whites are no more responsible for attacks on humans than other species of sharks and contribute in valuable ways to the ocean’s ecosystem

“47 Meters Down: Uncaged” rivals its predecessors in terms of jump scares and terror and becomes a tense bloodbath in its second half. To forge a bond between his daughter Mia (Sophie Nelisse) and her new stepsister, Sasha (Corinne Foxx), Grant (John Corbett) arranges for them to attend a glass-bottomed boat ride to watch great white sharks feed in their natural habitat. He drops them off at the pier and drives to work, which is mapping (for an incoming research team) an underground Mayan cave system flooded decades earlier. What Grant doesn’t know is the girls never get on the boat.

Sasha’s friends Nichole (Sistine Rose Stallone) and Alexa (Brianne Tju) take them to a private lagoon that leads into the caves. After swimming in the exquisite blue water for two hours, the girls decide to make a quick visit into the first cavern. In and out, Alexa assures them. It is a beautiful and thrilling swim. What can go wrong?

Everything.

The girls wind up trapped in a tomb-like cavern above a twisting labyrinth of passageways stalked by a blind great white shark whose other senses are heightened enough to hear their frantic attempts to escape. There’s no way back, and they are running out of air, forcing them into the bleak dark waters where the sleek white predator lurks.

From the long opening credits, over a montage of eerie Mayan tombs, to the claustrophobic twisting underwater ruins and to the final shot, this film establishes a tension that never lets up during its short running time. Anything that can go wrong does. It creates a bond between the sisters. It punishes those who think only about their own survival and lauds its heroines for their unflinching courage and willingness to save each other, even at the potential cost of their own life. Nothing unites a split family like an enemy… and this one is deadly.

As such, “there’s a lot of blood.” A boat chums the waters with gallons of it, drawing dozens of great whites. Clouds of blood obscure the water whenever someone gets chomped—and six people do, most of them unable to survive. Sharks leap out of the water and grab people. They attack people on and off camera, sometimes fatally and, at other times, forcing them into narrow crevices or making them fight for their lives.

A girl repeatedly stabs a shark until it releases her; she also fires a flair gun into a shark to get it to release someone else. A swimmer finds a severed head floating in the dingy water. In a tribute to “Jurassic Park: The Lost World,” we see two sharks rip someone in half at a distance. Sharks loom up behind people and come out of nowhere, threatening the characters many times. A deadly undercurrent tears them away from each other. We see a girl drown without her oxygen mask.

Despite the peril, profanity is lower than expected—shouts of “Oh, my God!” (10) and “My God” (1). One girl teases another about her butt being too big to go through a tunnel (they use cruder language). The camera lingers on the bikini-clad-girls in the lagoon. An early scene features a group of girls bullying another girl by shoving her into a pool. The teenagers disobey their parents… and pay a heavy and devastating price.

The underwater cinematography is effective in setting a tense mood, and the music creates a low sense of ominous foreboding. This is the first movie of its kind to present a unique idea, a shark “raised in total darkness,” who hunts by heightened senses. Its blindness makes it even more grotesque in appearance, its hide scarred from many scrapes in the caverns.

As is typical for these kinds of thrillers, the characters often make stupid decisions that imperil them further (the girls figure out noise draws the shark because of its blindness, but continue to talk, hyperventilate, shout to each other, and scream, which also uses up their valuable and dwindling oxygen supply).

Compared to the original film from a few years ago, in which two girls had to survive in a shark cage 47 meters down, this one is a much tighter, bloodier, and more harrowing thriller. Both are effective at generating terror in the audience, and this is an adrenaline-pumping way to spend two hours.

Parents, however, should heed the rating, since the nature of some scenes could cause nightmares… and know it may come with trailers for the sequel to Stephen King’s demonic clown-movie, “IT.”

• Violence: Very Heavy
• Profane language: Moderate— • “Oh, my G*d!” (10) • “My G*d” (1) • H*ll (2)
• Vulgar/Crude language: Mild— • cr*p (1) • a** (2)
• Nudity: Moderate— • girls in bikinis or underwear
• Sex: None
• Occult: None

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.