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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 439156" data-attributes="member: 23">47 Metres Down: Uncaged (2019) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimages-na.ssl-images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fpv-target-images%2Fd83cef9e6ec3edfd049f098b4549d55c646c8ccc11827241680e361c8a915810._RI_V_TTW_.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=62e99b7d6b24ecd48076c8c940643222eefb4a4200ab82b7fabd75daf568bd81" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 610px" />The sequel to a film I haven't watched. And yet it became free to watch on Prime and I think it's obvious to anyone with a pulse that continuity simply isn't a concern with these films. I hadn't felt I'd missed anything as I watched, and a quick search afterwards confirmed that this is entirely standalone and unrelated to the first.Expectations were low and in many ways they were exceeded, certainly in the film's opening act. It took its time to establish its characters and to set the scene. Even once they got them into the water, it was a little while before there was a sniff of a shark. In this regard, I was reminded of 2010's The Reef (still, for my money, one of the few genuinely good killer shark films).Since I appreciated this relatively slow build, I didn't object to the obligatory soap opera element with the blended family and the struggle for the stepsisters to adapt and learn to live harmoniously (the redemption arc was very loudly telegraphed and played out exactly as one would anticipate).More difficult to overcome when it came to the cast, characters and dynamics is how rigidly gynocentric it is in tone. Around 18 months ago I watched the sequel to The Reef, made a couple of years after this and this element positively stank up the ocean. Watching Uncaged, it's easy to see from where that film had ripped off that element. Again we have four friends striking out on an adventure buoyed by the sisterhood. The male characters in Uncaged are at least presented somewhat sympathetically. It's just unfortunate that they tend to be peripheral and expendable. [ISPOILER]There are three named male characters in the film. They are the first three characters to be killed by the sharks. Because in 2019 men are not permitted to be "survivors".[/ISPOILER]The sharky stuff begins promisingly. Our first glimpse comes in a confused moment where a structural collapse in the underwater city (yes - an underwater city) causes silt to rise, reducing visibility drastically. Behind one of the women, a shark glides past nearby like a ghostly apparition. It's so subtle I questioned if I had even seen it.If only it had built on this.  Instead that's the only good shark shot in the entire film and it's immediately followed up with a barrage of poorly computer generated sharks. And they can't be regular sharks, can they? They're enormous White Sharks that have evolved to living in the darkness and so lack vision but have heightened senses in other regards. In fact this film throws science out of the window. Not only are they bloodthirsty, they live and hunt in pairs (unlike real Great Whites which are solitary creatures and not a bit social), they can move backwards, and they apparently stay cooped up in this restricted space, despite most White Sharks travelling thousands of miles each year. How they have survived for long enough to evolve (thousands of years? Many generations) in a place where there is no real food source is a question that isn't answered. The lack of science isn't just restricted to sharks as well. One "scare" comes when a cave fish screams at the girls. It. Literally. Screams.There is some attempt at logic when it comes to the setting of the submerged Mayan city. It feels like something that could exist, and the narrow labyrinthine tunnels through which the girls swim to reach it (before getting lost) genuinely feel like my idea of the seventh circle of hell. Ultimately, though, the darkness means this is not a pretty film to watch. The lack of light strained my eyes, and once the attacks begin this was compounded by the noisy score (full of stings) and the screaming characters. There's a sense of urgency (helped by the ticking time bomb of their air tanks running down towards zero), but it's a very exhausting film to watch, and mostly not in any good way.It also has to be said that the setting also evoked the underwater kingdom from Jaws 3-D, the chase through the sunken galleon in Jaws The Revenge and the "sharks indoors" from Deep Blue Sea, none of which is really A Good Thing (on the subject of Deep Blue Sea, one "saviour" character dies midway through a motivational monologue. It all fell rather flat here, though). That's a problem of this film's really. It's not original, but the homages to earlier shark films feel like they're intent on paying homage to bad ripoffs and sequels. Even a scene with a head making a character jump feels more like Jaws 3-D's Overman than Ben Gardner. Once the survivors surface (and yes, it's the most obvious ones. One could watch the first few scenes and know who would ultimately survive and why) there is a welcome mini-twist that ties it back to something from earlier in the film, but frankly, it then gives a few more minutes of action that are sillier than anything which came before it. [ISPOILER]The people on that glass-bottomed boats were the luckiest punters ever. Even before things kicked off, they were surrounded by seven or eight fifteen foot Whites. That's some chum they were using[/ISPOILER].With this genre, I had a good idea what to expect, and this was it. For the ways in which it surpassed expectations, I'm appreciative. But these are only a tiny fraction compared with the many ways in which it runs true to the lazy "monster shark" film, which is why it never really rises above being derivative pap. Armed with this knowledge, someone might even enjoy it. With expectations around my ankles, I didn't hate it, even if I won't be back for a second viewing.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?