Happy All-Hallow’s Month! In anticipation of Halloween — which, let’s face it, we’ve been anticipating since last Halloween — Daily Grindhouse will again be offering daily celebrations of horror movies here on our site. This October’s theme is horror sequels — the good, the bad, the really bad, and the unfairly unappreciated. We’re calling it SCREAMQUELS!
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Have you ever found yourself watching THE DESCENT and thinking, “Sure, this is brilliant, but what these caves really need are some gigantic, bloodthirsty sharks”? If you answered in the affirmative, then you, my friend, are in luck. (And if you answered in the negative, well, I still think you’re in luck.) Allow me to introduce you to the aquatic horror gem 47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED.
Though it is technically a sequel to 2017’s 47 METERS DOWN, 2019’s UNCAGED is a standalone story. A group of high school girls decide to go diving in an underwater cave system that houses a sunken Mayan city. After an accident closes off the exit, the girls must search for another way out. Once they’re trapped inside the watery tunnels, they discover that they’re not alone: great white sharks that have evolved to survive in total darkness live in the city. The girls’ oxygen tanks start to run low as they try to find a new exit and evade the sharks, which are very big and very hungry.
As you can see from the synopsis, the film bears more than a passing resemblance to THE DESCENT. It even hits similar character beats as Neil Marshall’s 2005 horror classic and deals with the same issues of grief and strained sisterhood. However, UNCAGED is a thrilling and entertaining movie on its own merits, turning sharks into ghostly slasher villains and fully embracing its suspenseful and ridiculous premise.
Director Johannes Roberts, who co-wrote the film with Ernest Riera, makes canny use of the underwater setting, crafting tense scenes and more than a few shocking moments. He finds the skin-crawling claustrophobia inherent in the tight underwater tunnels and turns murky green-brown water into a terrifying death trap. The underwater lighting is fantastic: a shark’s shadow silhouetted against the bright light of a lantern raises goosebumps, and the film’s best jump scare comes when a flashing red alarm lights up the inky water to reveal massive jaws mere inches from the girls’ vulnerable faces.
Roberts uses sound in intriguing ways as well. Often all we can hear is steady breathing as the girls move through the underwater labyrinth, and this constant awareness of their breath — and the ticking seconds on their oxygen tanks — makes it feel like the walls are closing in on us as we watch. The sound effect used to signal the sharks’ arrival is delightfully eerie, partly because it makes so little sense: it’s a low-pitched boom that is almost mechanical in nature, reminding viewers less of the killer shark in JAWS than of the hydraulic music stings that accompany Michael Myers in the original HALLOWEEN.
UNCAGED is a well-executed survival thriller, keeping viewers on the edge of their seat for nearly all of the third act. It is also hilarious, intentionally injecting humor at perfect intervals to remind us that, yes, this movie knows exactly how silly it is and it revels in that silliness. Every time a character shows up who can guide the girls to safety, a shark appears to chomp away at their only hope for survival. Experienced divers who want to protect the girls are like Spinal Tap drummers, and the scares and laughs just get better every time another one meets their toothy demise.
It’s difficult to pick a highlight of the film, but the wild finale is a bloody, white-knuckle delight. Deliberately saccharine music cues throughout the film buttress the irony and humor of the story, and the final instance of this wry choice would be cruel if it weren’t so damn fun. Some horror films stay with us because they examine the deepest, most frightening parts of the human condition; others linger in our hearts and psyches because they expertly deploy sharky jump scares and trails of chum. 47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED is a strong horror sequel that leaps headfirst into the latter category, proving that sometimes a film has to be smart and well-crafted in order to be pure, silly fun.
Tags: Brec Bassinger, Brianne Tju, Corinne Foxx, Davi Santos, Ernest Riera, Horror, Johannes Roberts, John Corbett, Khylin Rhambo, Mark Silk, Mexico, Nia Long, Sequels, Sharks, Sistine Stallone, Sophie Nélisse, tomandandy
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