47 Meters Down Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

47 Meters Down Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 27, 2017

Jaws will probably forever be the standard by which all “shark” films will be measured, despite what some errant fans of Sharknado may want to insist (and, yes, that’s a joke). But part of Jaws’ presentational genius, something at least partially an “accident” due to the well reported issues the creative team had with various special effects attempts, is that the film doesn’t actually show the shark, at least in any truly revelatory way, until a fair way into the story. As many horror filmmakers have wisely discovered, it’s often more frightening to leave whatever “boogie man” (and/or shark) is the assailant to the imaginations of the viewers rather than showing everything in full detail. While probably not best appreciated as a true "shark" film, 47 Meters Down doesn’t hesitate to get up close and personal with its (CGI) sharks, albeit only intermittently. That said, one of the things this fitfully engaging thriller does is to create angst separate and apart from the fact that there are some apparently very hungry beasties swimming around in the deep. Perhaps a film that takes place largely underwater can’t accurately be described as being “high concept”, but in essence 47 Meters Down has the fairly simple premise of two sisters trapped (more or less, anyway) in an underwater cage that has broken free of the winch attaching it to an already dilapidated boat that takes enterprising Mexican tourists out into the ocean to witness the activities of sharks in their native domain. The two focal characters are Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt), and the screenplay by Johannes Roberts (who also directed) and Ernest Riera gives some brief and passing lip service to differentiation between the siblings, with Lisa, who just broke up with her boyfriend, posited as the less adventurous and more withdrawn of the two. Character beats ultimately hardly matter in this film, though, once it tips over into survival mode, which it does rather surprisingly late (more or less around a half hour into the film).

That first half hour or so of 47 Meters Down tries fairly obviously to set the table for an audience connection to the sisters, but there’s simply not that much “there” there to engender much reaction one way or the other. Even the supposedly angst filled background involving Lisa’s romantic woes is dealt with fairly discursively in the supposedly “exciting” but already completely overused cliché of texts being shown onscreen. But even more cinematic moments, like the sisters frolicking at a party or on an admittedly scenic beach seem more like a travelogue than anything meant to evoke actual emotions. The film actually finally starts touching on one potent emotion, fear, when it starts to get into its main plot conceit, with adventurous Kate pretty much dragging reticent Lisa along on a cage dive to see sharks.

The fact that their supposed “three hour tour” is hosted by an obviously seedy guy named Captain Taylor (a pretty scuzzy looking Matthew Modine) offers a bit of foreshadowing, as if any were actually needed. When the winch holding the cage malfunctions (several times, in fact), the upshot is that the sisters are sent hurtling into deep water with a limited amount of air and with those toothsome predators lurking around every murky corner.

From a story perspective, there’s very little going on in 47 Meters Down, and in fact that is one of the film’s chief deficits, since the sisters are by and large confined to a cloistered location (aside from occasionally getting “out and about” to look around, in what is probably an unhelpful conceit). That confines the film to threats coming to them, which in fact they do, with the real subliminal terror gaining traction with every panicked breath the sisters take, since the air supply is literally bubbling away.

From a technical perspective, however, 47 Meters Down is quite winning. As is shown in the sole making of featurette accompanying the main feature as a supplement on this Blu-ray disc, a lot of the film was shot in a deep tank within a studio, but the sense of being lost in an interminable oceanic morass is quite realistic throughout the film. Perhaps surprisingly, given the fact that the sisters are wearing scuba gear for all of the “survivor” elements of the story, performances ring through with some authenticity, and purely technical aspects like being able to see characters and hear them more or less clearly are handled with aplomb. The CGI sharks are also surprisingly effective, giving a sense of menace at regular intervals.

47 Meters Down Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

47 Meters Down is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment and Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. I haven't been able to track down any authoritative technical data on the shoot other than that noted underwater cinematographer Mark Silk has used Alexa models on other "beneath the sea" projects. This particular film has to be separated into two parts, with the first part being the pre- dive sequences, which, when in bright lighting and/or outdoors, pops really well, even with occasional slight issues like pixellation. Detail levels are routinely quite high throughout the opening half hour or so. However, as should probably be expected, once the film delves underwater, fine detail in particular takes a bit of a dive (sorry), though kind of remarkably clarity remains commendably consistent even with billows of liquid and insufficient lighting coming into play. Perhaps because of the inherent murkiness, the CGI sharks are arguably more convincing than they might have otherwise been. Roberts goes for quite a few extreme close-ups throughout the underwater material, something that tends to support general detail levels. In wider shots, however, and with that aforementioned murkiness, there are at least some shots when virtually nothing can be clearly made out (see screenshot 19).

47 Meters Down Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

47 Meters Down's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track gets off to a walloping good start with pulses of LFE that reverberate incredibly strongly, to the point that some shelves in my home media room were humming with sympathetic vibrations. A pulsing score by Tomandandy also provides regular surround activity. Some of the widest effects are probably expectedly in the first act of the film, where outdoor environments allow for more spacious placement of ambient environmental sounds. The more cloistered underwater material still has good surround presence, but is understandably a bit more tamped down. With an understanding that a lot of the film contains dialogue spoken by characters in scuba gear, everything is rendered surprisingly cleanly and clearly.

47 Meters Down Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Johannes Roberts and Producer James Harris


• Unexpected Originality: The Making of 47 Meters Down (1080p; 11:12) may reveal a bit of wishful thinking in its title, but does have some interesting looks at the studio tank much of the film was shot in, as well as some decent interviews.

47 Meters Down Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

47 Meters Down has a few moments of genuine tension, but the film takes too long to get to its main survivor story, and then wastes some momentum in needless talky interchanges. The fact that the sisters can get out and about, if not up, might also be a strategic error, since they simply retreat back to the cage after these diversions, making the film ultimately seem fairly repetitive. The technical aspects of this production are quite interesting, however, and the good news is the technical aspects of the Blu-ray disc are generally strong as well, for those considering a purchase.