47 Meters Down (2017)

(In French, On TV, May 2020) Another entry in the surprisingly robust “young Americans go vacationing south of the border, make a questionable decision; terrible things ensue” subgenre, 47 Meters Down is occasionally well made, occasionally infuriating, occasionally surprising and occasionally dumb. If that sounds like an average low-budget thriller, then you’d be right: This time, two sisters are trapped deep below sea level in a cage surrounded by great white sharks. Writer-director Johannes Roberts can manage some great underwater footage, but the blue shark menace gets repetitive after a while. While a bit too technically well executed to be bad, 47 Meters Down can be dull at times. The bait-and-switch ending will not make everyone happy considering that it undoes quite a bit of the film. [October 2024: …and has since become an annoyingly pervasive cliché of the survival subgenre.] Still, the execution of the film shows some promise, and Roberts may end up doing something truly interesting one of these days.