47 Meters Down Sinks to the Bottom with Poor Ratings and Logic Flaws

There are many questions that lie behind the creation of 47 Meters Down regarding its overall goal. There didn't seem to be a point to this movie, and the ending failed to provide any closure. There were many aspects to the film that just physically seemed impossible and could have caused the audience to question the decisions of Johannes Roberts. For example, sharks avoid outright attacking humans, and they especially would not purposely destroy a diving cage just to get to its contents. Also, it is very unlikely that a diving boat would have two winches, a primary and backup, both with frayed ropes increasing the breaking chance. These factors all hurt the film in terms of ratings, such as a 5.7/10 from IMDb and a 55% from Rotten Tomatoes.

On to the actual summary of the movie. The film begins with two girls, Kate (Claire Holt) and Lisa (Mandy Moore), talking about Lisa's latest breakup. Her boyfriend, Stuart, who is never portrayed in the film, left her because he felt she wasn't fun or adventurous enough for him. This sparks the girls' decision to go diving with sharks, seeing as they are in Mexico and can find someone to take them for a low price. Lisa is scared to death, but Kate convinces her, with the help of some locals they just met. The two girls each experience regret the moment they lay eyes on the boat, for it does not appear to be in the best shape. As the group travels out into the ocean, accompanied by Captain Taylor (Matthew Modine), the boys gear up to go for the first dive. The girls watch and learn, and they then prepare for their dive, but if one were to look very closely at the winch, they would see a bit of frayed rope. Now, the understanding was that the girls would be submerged five meters, and should radio to the captain when their air levels reached 100 BAR and 50 BAR in that order. Once they are under for a short amount of time, they start to warm up to the situation and enjoy it, but at this very moment, the frayed rope snapped and the cage fell a total of 47 meters to the ocean floor (as the title states). The two girls are now trapped in the cage, out of radio range, bleeding, and low on oxygen. The backup winch is sent down, only after boat assistant Javier died getting it down there. As the boat pulled the cage up with the backup winch, the rope broke again, and this time the girls were out of oxygen. Spare tanks were sent down, but with each consecutive tank come an increased risk of Nitrogen Narcosis, which causes hallucinations. This relates to the ending of the movie, but I will not expose such information in fear of ruining it for someone else.

Personally, I did not like this movie. It seemed like it was thrown together to criminalize sharks, when in reality they are not that dangerous of a creature. The dynamic figure of a lot of the scenes were shark teeth clenching on anything near, and including, some victims. The diagetic audio of suspenseful music increasing in volume signaled a shark nearby, which actually ruined the suspense because it was so repetitive. So many clichés took place: the cage falling not once but twice, the cuts the victims kept accidentally inflicting releasing blood for the sharks, and the shadiness of the dive boat. My friends and I even predicted the ending before it took place, and even then it let us down due to the trickery the movie tried to play on us, despite the title already depleting most of the surprise from the movie.

Overall, I rate this movie Bad-Bad.

The film's trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddYSGGJAKOk