Yet Another Shark Flick...

ROBERTS, Johannes (Dir.), “47 Metres Down: Uncaged”, Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures/thefyzz, 2019.

I’ve spent some time looking back over my experiences in the surf, at sea, or on the beach, during the past day or so, and I’ve made a list of life-threatening incidents that I’ve experienced; that is, moments which might have led to danger should things have gone pear-shaped. I’ve compiled the following:

·                 Got caught in a Riptide

·                 Stung by Jellyfish

·                 Encountered a Sea-snake

·                 Picked up a live Cone Shell by accident

·                 Jumped into Shallow Water

·                 Blundered into a Moray Eel

·                 Got my foot caught in a broken Lobster Trap; almost drowned trying to get free

·                 Got barrel-rolled by a Dumping Wave

·                Got my feet shredded by Coral

·                 Bitten by Ants

·                 Sunburn and Heat-stroke

·                 Stung by Sand-Flies

·                 Overrun by Sea Lice

·                 Nipped by Crabs

·                 Encountered a Snake

·                 Pinned by a falling Mound of Sand

·                 Seasickness

·                 Almost Capsized in a Boat

·                 Passed within “coo-ee” of a Shark

Australian kids – at least they did in my day – spend a lot of time at the beach: there has to be an upside to living alongside all of the poisonous and deadly creatures we share the country with. However, at no time was I ever led to believe that such activity was ever entirely safe. My parents drilled into me that there were dangers to be met with along the way and that I had to be careful. Still, children get inquisitive and they get into trouble, as even this short list will prove. And, on the whole, I never really liked the beach: I preferred to stay on the sand rather than get into the water, so my tally of deadly encounters is probably on the lower-than-average side of things. (And before anyone makes comments about sea lice, they’re not like other types of lice but they’ll definitely give you the heebies.)

What I’m driving at here is this: if you go to where the danger is, the danger will find you and, if you’re not careful, it will probably get you, no matter how prepared you think you are. Down here we’re one month into winter and that means that all of our local shark species are doing their winter thing; in the case of Great White Sharks, it means that they’re moving north along the coastlines towards the Equator. They do this every year. Sometimes they do it in great numbers and on those occasions, we refer to those migrations as “shark years” – it happens on average every five years or so. Recently, we had an attack on our northern New South Wales beaches; that’s a shame and the victim’s family has my commiserations. However, that wouldn’t have happened if the person involved hadn’t gotten into the water (it’s winter, for chrissakes!). Despite this, people tend to go off the deep end about these things and forget about all of the times that they themselves went out to the edge of civilization and got caught in, or by, something that might have ended very badly for them. Instead they holler for drift nets and culls, ignoring the fact that these measures invariably kill vastly more sealife than just the sharks for which they’re designed. And governments go ahead and implement these stupid measures because they have one eye firmly focused on their electoral approval and sharks don’t vote.

Think of this: sharks – on average – kill ten people across the planet every year; people destroy – on average – ten million shark lives per annum. ‘Good thing sharks don’t vote, isn’t it?

All of which makes me wonder, yet again, where the funding for all of these shark “creature feature” movies comes from? Sharks are an easy ‘go to’ for such movies because they’re perceived to be abundant (they’re not any more) and easy to access; any film which involves them is more than likely going to be filmed somewhere with high tourist potential and which will look very cinematic when photographed; and the people appearing in the film will most likely be young, attractive and – therefore – scantily-clad. Who wouldn’t pony up the cash for such a project? Add in the fact that CGI is dirt cheap when it comes to animating things which are essentially tubes with fins and teeth on one end, and it’s a triple threat. Of course, creating an atmosphere of terror concerning these fish also helps those industries who thrive by making shark-fin soup, Chinese medicines and shark nets; industries which might likely be convinced to contribute to the cost of making such a film. The sooner governments stop responding to the illusory threats of shark invasions, and the sooner Chinese quackery is outlawed across the planet, the better.

Which brings me – stepping off my soapbox – to this film.

In the past four decades or so, the concept of the shark film has morphed and adapted. Initially, let’s say sometime in the 60s, if you saw a shark in a movie, it was often just a glimpse of a fin sticking out of the water. In “Thunderball” – the Bond film – we saw some close-up sharks and even Sean Connery was a bit shocked by how close to them he ended up (apparently, there was only a pane of glass between him and the fish at the end of the flick, and he’d been told quite clearly that they would be using a dead shark – they didn’t). “Jaws”, of course, was the first definitive shark film, riffing off the Peter Benchley novel which was mostly about stuff other than a big fish, for which the shark was simply a metaphor. At that point, it was just the fact that it was a shark that got audiences hyperventilating; later shark films had to up the ante.

In the “Jaws” sequels (viewing not advised), the sharks got bigger and were assigned motive, implying that they had the capacity to reason (ooh! Spooky!). This was further developed in “Deep Blue Sea” and again in “The Shallows”. (I should just point out too that sharks do reason and are not stupid – science has caught up with Renny Harlin and Jaume Collet-Serra, or, more correctly, vice versa.) In each ensuing iteration, size became a factor until we hit “The Meg” where it got ridiculous. Putting aside the silliness of the “Sharknado” outliers, I had begun to wonder where such movie fare could possibly go now? Well, here it is in “47 Metres Down: Uncaged” – blind, zombie, Great White Sharks!

(Of course, they’re not really undead; but the way that they’re portrayed here they certainly look like it!)

In this film, four poorly-characterised young women take off on an illicit cave-diving jaunt, swimming down from a cenote in the Yucatan jungle into a submerged Mayan catacomb which debouches – they are vaguely told – out into the open ocean. Things go (ahem) swimmingly, until – deep inside the subaqueous complex – a blind Great White Shark roars out of the gloom and traps them underwater by collapsing the tunnel they came in by. The ‘brainy girl’ Mia decides that these sharks have evolved down here and are blind as a result because, as we know, anything living in a cave must be blind and colourless (we are also treated to the sight of an enormous – and screaming - neon tetra – a type of tropical fish familiar to anyone who’s ever kept an aquarium – blind and of gigantic proportions because, well, cave… sketchy evolution reference… whatever). So, the premise of this film is established: there’s no easy exit; the only way out is to go through to the ocean, avoiding all the zombie sharks en route.

With the first film in this series, “47 Metres Down”, there were a lot of things to be enjoyed. The story didn’t just hang upon a big monster fish rocketing unexpectedly out of the dark every ten minutes or so; there were some interesting story wrinkles stemming from the use of SCUBA gear that took the narrative into new and strange areas. Here, there’s some of that DNA in the coding but not nearly as well executed. For starters, geography is an issue. In the first movie, we, the audience, knew where we were the whole time. There was a boat upstairs; 35 metres below that, the communications cut out; 12 metres further down from there we had the separated shark-diving cage with our two prospective victims inside, slowly running out of air. The film retailed this information well and – just like in “The Shallows” – used this map to guide its story along. In this tale, because we’re underwater and in a stone labyrinth, we never really know where we are, or where the threat is coming from. I understand that that’s the point – that this is what causes our characters to be terrified – but what we see on the screen is a bunch of silt and bubbles, some thrashing limbs, a glimpse of teeth and then it’s all over. We can’t tell exactly what’s happened and how it took place until our survivors gather and do a re-cap. That’s not ideal.

The set dressing has some issues as well. One reason that I shelled out for this movie was the promise of Mayan surroundings – having just read everything I could lay my hands on about the Maya culture, I am great with Maya knowledge and wanted to see how this stood up. In the depths of these catacombs (which, as a concept, strictly aren’t Mayan but, whatevs), they have these humanoid statues, rough human shapes, standing around in circles like shop dummies. These in no way reflect Mayan art styles and are there only for the purpose of making the characters (and us) think that there are other characters, or other people, lurking in the gloom. It’s a cheap scare tactic. Otherwise, I was sold on this: it looks good. Without the window mannequins however, we might have had a clearer idea of what was going on.

Like the first film, the writers take what they’ve chosen and run with it, and they do this quite well, creating some truly unexpected but logical moments of real terror. There are some jump scares, but they aren’t cheap, and there are some moments of equipment, and other, critical failure, but they’re handled well. The last few scenes, where our heroes hit the open ocean, have some truly OMG moments but they were deftly handled and subtly flagged leading to very satisfying results. This movie is definitely worth the price of admission because if sustained threat is what you’re into, it certainly delivers.

(I should point out though that, near the start, there’s an extended sequence that seems to be little more than a video clip for the 1987 Aztec Camera song “Somewhere In My Heart”. If you loathe Aztec Camera and all they stand for, feel free to fast forward through this – it goes on for some time…)

The downside? Well, clarity (as discussed) is a bit of a problem, but mainly – just like it did in the first movie, the Hollywood Morality Playbook rears its ugly head. At no point in this film was I unaware of who was going to make it home alive. All of this is flagged during the lacklustre character development phase and by subsequent character choices. (I made a note of the character’s names going in but, for the most part, the only differences between them are the styles and colours of the bikinis that they’re wearing.) Mia, the brainy girl, because she gets bullied by the school bitch at the start of the film, gets to live, and her stepsister Sasha also survives, not because she comes to Mia’s defense but because she feels bad for doing nothing about it, despite making some half-hearted attempts at later reconciliation. However, she does get punished for her inaction. Alex, the Asian girl, dies for being the brains behind the whole misadventure, with its implications of sexual impropriety with one of the two boys associated with the diving set-up (they’re walking Spam; don’t get attached). And Nicole, who is pushy and sassy and never does what she’s told, also doesn’t make it because Bad Girl (obviously). Basically, if they’re in the water they’re chum, unless they’re someone else’s stepsister, and the script makes all kinds of twisted justifications to rationalise this. Not cool. And certainly not something which should stand in for actual characters.

I get the feeling, having seen this happen twice now, that Johannes Roberts has a bit of a thing for taking mousey girls and pushing them to the point where they explode and strike back in anger. That’s key to both of these films and the way that they meet their resolution. Once was interesting; twice is no accident. The appeal of most shark flicks (not for me personally, but it’s why, I think, these films get made) is the possibility of seeing young, vulnerable women, threatened by large voracious carnivores. The ideal of the ‘young beauty in danger’ is as old as Dracula and actually, even older than that. Here, the goal apparently, is to strip the young beauty of all hope and leave her in extremis with only herself and her outraged sense of justice to rely upon. Obviously, Roberts finds this fascinating; on the other hand, I find watching young twenty-something women punching sharks in the face somewhat ludicrous. Maybe that’s just me.

Regardless, this is worth a watch, especially if the shark flick is your horror movie of choice. It’s not great but it’s entertaining as far as it goes. I wonder though, where this sub-genre will go from here: vampire sharks? Virus-carrying, kill-crazed zombie were-sharks? Who can say? After “Sharknado” the concept seems almost bullet-proof; however, I know for sure that playing the Maximising Card did no favours for the “Predator” franchise, so I can’t see it working much longer with this one. In the meantime, solely for the interesting narrative arc on offer with this film, I’m giving it three Tentacled Horrors.