47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)
Directed by Johannes Roberts
Four teenage girls go on a diving adventure to explore a submerged Mayan city. Once inside, their rush of excitement turns into a jolt of terror as they discover the sunken ruins are a hunting ground for deadly great white sharks. With their air supply steadily dwindling, the friends must navigate the underwater labyrinth of claustrophobic caves and eerie tunnels in search of a way out of their watery hell.
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3 films that influenced 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
What critics say influenced 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
If you’re looking for a connection to the original Mandy Moore-starring film, there isn’t one aside from how Johannes again tries – and fails – to match the intense below-the-surface claustrophobic atmosphere of The Descent, another obvious inspiration.
It also doubles down overt references to Neil Marshall’s low-key 2005 classic The Descent .
(You can use air pockets on the ceilings as a secondary supply of air!) You’ll also likely read a lot of reviews referring to the film as The Descent with sharks, and while that description is not at all inaccurate, Uncaged lacks the sophistication and nuanced character development that made that Neil Marshall masterpiece so special.
Even without the threat of real sharks, these moments that featured those dark and cramped passageways were enough to make me feel on edge, reminding me of the same way I felt the first time I watched The Descent .
With Uncaged , Roberts smartly goes in a much different direction, utilizing the sequel’s very specific locale (submerged Mayan ruins) as a means to incite feelings of claustrophobia and disorientation, resulting in an experience that’s akin to if The Descent took place underwater.
At times, this tale of four young women trying to rescue each other in an underwater maze — as opposed to the two caged vacation divers of “47 Meters Down” — suggests a variation on “The Descent,” the 2005 spelunking thriller.
A shark menaced Blake Lively in The Shallows , Jason Statham fought a prehistoric fish in The Meg and, perhaps most successfully, sharks circled stranded divers in 47 Meters Down .
Between The Shallows , The Meg , and lesser-budgeted splashes such as Johannes Roberts’ 47 Meters Down , fin flicks have surged back into summer’s movie night focus.
The shark sequences in “Uncaged” are scarier than the ones in “The Meg,” and that’s partly because the movie delivers the horrifying payoff we on some level crave: to see people get chomped.
In trying to one-up the first film, Uncaged becomes more cartoonish and unrealistic (granted, not in the league of The Meg ), but that also makes it more fun than the downer original.
And she wears overalls, presumably, from the She’s All That line of teen outcast wear.