Pretty Girls in Peril in “47 Meters Down”
By Skip Sheffield
“It’s just like being in a zoo, except you are in the cage,”
explains a Mexican beach boy to two pretty American girls he is trying to
convince to see sharks up close from the safety of a metal cage hanging by a
steel cable.
The movie is “47 Meters Deep,” and it is a real nail-biter.
What could go wrong? Just about everything.
For me I had two initial problems. First I like sharks and I
have had some close encounters. Second I am highly claustrophobic, so being
cooped up in a cage would be torture.
But British writer-director Johannes Roberts knows how to
keep an audience on the edge of its seats and make them jump, as he did most
recently in 2016 with “The Other Side of the Door.”
Former pop singer Mandy Moore and Australian actress Claire
Holt play Lisa and Kate; two sisters who look nothing alike. Dark-haired,
brown-eyed Lisa has just been dumped by her boyfriend, so she decides to invite
her blond, blue-eyed sister to take his place to a dream vacation to a Mexican
resort.
Lisa mopes around at first, but more outgoing Kate convinces
her to go out on a night on the town at their seaside resort. There they meet a
couple of local guys and begin dancing and kanoodling with them. The next day
the guys say they have a friend, Capt. Taylor (Matthew Modine) who has a dive
boat and will make them a really good deal- just $100- for the cage diving
experience.
The girls should have been a little wary when they were
picked up in a rickety rowboat and taken to an even more rickety, age-worn dive
ship.
But as in all horror-thrillers, the girls are naïve and
trusting. At first their dive is enchanting. Capt. Taylor chums the water with
bloody fish guts and they see their first sharks. The cage is just five meters down.
Then the winch lets loose and they plummet to the 47 meters of the title. Even
for experienced divers that is a long way down; more than 150 feet. At this
depth you can’t just pop up to the surface or you will get the bends, or
nitrogen narcosis. Suffice it to say the girls endure all manner of peril in
their fight to survive. Happily the movie is only 90 minutes long, but in that
time Roberts pulls out every trick in the scare book. Mandy Moore proves
herself an able screamer and weeper, while Claire Holt isn’t as tough as she
thinks she is.
If
you enjoy pretty girls in peril, this may interest you. For me, 90 minutes was
more than enough
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