ROBERTS, Johannes (Dir.), “47 Metres Down”, Dimension Films/The
Fyzz Facility/Dragon Root/Flexibon Films/Lantica Pictures/Tea Shop & Film
Company, 2017.
With
my passive sonar pinging, I encountered this DVD just the other day. I know it’s
quite soon after my previous foray into deadly waters but I suspect that the
surfeit of shark films that have been appearing lately might have something to
do with a general public awareness campaign to do with surf and swimming safety
and good boat-handling practice. Perhaps. It could also have something to do
with idiotically self-important surf stars demanding shark culls on their favourite
breaks, or perhaps it’s a sneaky campaign by those companies who make cans of
shark-fin soup to demonstrate why we really do
need a sharp increase in shark killing – or perhaps not. Regardless, these
vested interests are probably being well-served by this kind of cinematic fare,
which makes me kind of queasy about discussing it in any kind of positive light.
The
best way to start I guess, is to rake over all the arguments once more in the interests
of providing a counter-argument to hating on sharks. First and foremost: you
are more likely to be killed by a cow, a bee or an automobile than a shark (in
fact you’re more likely to get killed by a donkey, or a hippopotamus); second,
you have to be in the water and acting stupidly in order for a shark to even
notice you; third (and it galls me to even have to bring this up) sharks are
not submersible torpedoes loaded with a pecker-stiffening Viagra equivalent –
they’re fish. You’d probably earn
more cred in the macho stakes by sucking down a jar of rollmops (from me certainly). There’s a particularly
roast-y part of Hell for all those cretins who think that Chinese Medicine has
any kind of potency and who support its planet-destroying trade…
So
there you have it: arguments against everything that shark films prey upon. The
real reason why these films are so popular comes back to those old tropes of
Hollywood Morality, which mostly devolve to a sneaky thrill generated by
watching young girls get killed by horrific monsters, fates predicated upon
morally-dubious actions and activities set up in the early part of the movie.
Too, in these days of computer-generated horrors, sharks are easy to model in a
virtual environment: I suspect that there are readily-obtained pre-generated
constructs out there that require only a little tweaking to suit any film-maker’s
needs. Increasingly, we’re moving away from the practical effects of Spielberg’s
“Jaws” and Renny Harlin’s “Deep Blue Sea”, and into a realm where
shark flicks are almost 100% CGI, in terms of their finny antagonists. Finally,
I’ve yet to see a shark movie where the location shooting isn’t some exotic
beach locale or tropical tourist paradise – given that these stories are all
about young people, there’s a definite ‘spring break’, or ‘schoolies’ mentality
at work here, reflecting the target audience, but also manifesting as a tangible
holiday perk for the film cast and crew. In short: cheap; nasty; easy; with
benefits. Voila! I give you the shark
film!
This
movie contains all of the above, in a presentation which could have been
assembled by rote. Two sisters, Lisa and Kate, go to Mexico for a vacation, and
it is soon revealed that Lisa is escaping from the severance of her long-term
relationship, a fact she kept secret from her younger sister. When Kate finds
out, she sets about ramping-up the party tone of the holiday, insisting upon
drinks, dancing and hooking up with the locals. Since ex-boyfriend Stephen
claimed that he broke up with Lisa because she was “boring”, when the
opportunity of cage-diving in shark-infested waters presents itself, Kate
insists they both go, in order to demonstrate the fault in Stephen’s thinking.
So
far, so obvious. When they get to the boat the next day, things get a little
iffy: the vessel (named “Sea-esta”;
yes, it’s that bad) is rusty and ancient and the crew leering and disorderly,
with the exception of Captain Taylor (Matthew Modine, slumming again!). Lisa
has further reservations, but Kate puts her foot down. Here is where Kate
crosses the Hollywood Morality line for the final time: not only – by this
point – has she insisted on making Lisa a party girl, encouraging her drinking,
staying up late and kissing strange boys, now she pushes her into doing
something that she absolutely does not want to do. Oh, and she lies to the
Captain about the level of Lisa’s diving competency (zero). At this point we
understand that Kate, along with the greasy, sarcastic first mate Javier, will
not be coming home (no spoiler alerts required here).
Strangely,
it’s at this point that the film takes off and shows some ingenuity. Rather
than simply turning the last half of the film into a series of floating heads (a la “Open
Water”) we instead learn the subtle and debilitating mysteries of SCUBA
diving:
SCUBA
diving is one of those activities that utterly bewilders me. The dangers and
threats that you have to expose yourself to in order to take part in this sport
boggle the mind. Not only are you putting yourself in harm’s way (low as it
generally is) in terms of sharks, but you also mess with your body chemistry,
exposing yourself to myriad life-destroying impairments along the way. The
Bends is no joke: you can suffer aneurysms; burst blood vessels in your eyes
resulting in permanent blindness; ruptured eardrums; you can split your hard
palate and crack your teeth; create debilitating ruptures of your spinal cord;
suffer paralysis; haemorrhage your lung tissue; and that’s if you don’t
straight-up die. Nitrogen narcosis is a bitch.
Kate
and Lisa enter the shark cage (swinging from its rusty chains, attached to a dodgy
cable running through an even dodgier winch) and head into the depths. They
become surrounded by sparkly fish and soon a big shark glides by creating a
momentary thrill. Then the cage drops downwards a fraction: via a radio
transmitter system, Captain Taylor says “nothing to worry about – just a little
winch slippage” …then the cage plummets to the bottom of the sea. Didn’t see
that coming! The girls end up on the ocean floor at 47 metres of depth – the radio
transmitter conveniently cuts out at 35.
Now
the scenario becomes a race for freedom while the air in their tanks slowly
runs out. Initially Lisa panics and wastes a bunch of air by doing so; Kate is
the first to venture out of the cage, in order to make contact with the ship by
swimming up to 35 metres. Captain Taylor informs them that he’s sending the
reprobate, Javier, down to them with a cable attached to a back-up winch and
tells them to watch out for his tell-tale flashlight. They see the light, but
Javier has roamed too far afield and has wandered into a benighted abyss far
from where the cage is. Lisa – now with more air than Kate after shark
encounters have upped her consumption – is forced to swim out to Javier and
haul him back. Several close calls with sharks later, she meets up with him in
time to see him horribly eaten. She returns with the cable, a few signal flares
and a spear-gun (hooray!).
From
here on in, every permutation of rescue from this unendurable situation takes
place with varying degrees of failure and success - the new cable breaks; the spear-gun
goes off accidentally (and doesn’t find a piscine target); fresh tanks are
dropped and must be retrieved – and all the while the air pressure in the
sisters’ reserves is ticking down. The end of the film provides an interesting
wrinkle: before sending down the spare tanks, Captain Taylor warns them that
breathing a second round of the oxygen mixture could cause hallucinations,
dizziness and other neurological side-effects. He cautions them to watch each
other closely for signs of this happening. This signals a distressing twist at
the film’s conclusion but also paves the way for some truly outrageous stunts
with the finny denizens of the deep, with Lisa going mano-a-mano with one of them as it leaps from the water to pluck
her from the jaws of safety, amongst others.
Did
I like this film? It starts slowly and the sound levels are truly weird at the
beginning – I was raising and lowering the volume over and over trying to reach
some kind of sweet spot before finding a
level (about 20 minutes in) that catered for both the dialogue and the sound
effects. Matthew Modine was a huge
distraction and I wondered as to the thinking behind his inclusion. It’s been awhile
since “Memphis Belle”, or “Cutthroat Island”, or “The Transporter 2”, or even that weird
episode of “The West Wing” where he
sleeps with Allison Janney at a school reunion, but he still stands out like
a shark fin in a cast replete with no-names (Mandy Moore, pop starlet,
included). I get it – even moderately well-known actors need to pay the rent
occasionally, but this was really
slumming it!
The
sharks are all CGI spectres and they glide in an out of the dark on cue. There
are some nifty shots of them through the surface of the water from the boat’s
deck but underwater they seemed a bit lacklustre. There’s a ridiculous moment
during a rescue attempt when the signal flare goes dark and, when the girls
light the next one, it’s only to find themselves surrounded by gaping maws. Do
the sharks carry on with these launched attacks despite the sudden illumination?
No: like a pack of underwater Stooges suddenly caught in the act, they flee
into the dark – “Nyuck! Nyuck! Nyuck! Whoops! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…!” Like a
shark going into a full-on bite frenzy, I rolled my eyes…
I
enjoyed the extra layer of dramatics that the SCUBA process brought to the
table in terms of creating complexity in the narrative – it was far and away
better than just watching heads floating through the waves and listening to endless
bitching before the inevitable. This film also had its moments of “it’s all
your fault we’re in this mess!” recriminations, but thankfully, it was low-key.
It’s not “The Shallows”; it’s not
even “Jaws”; however, “Open Water” 1, 2 or 3, it certainly isn’t
either, and that gives it three Tentacled Horrors from me.
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