Jaws and its ilk have kept me out of oceans (plus lakes, ponds and some swimming pools) since 1975, but one way in which I conquer my fear is to watch shark movies — and I’ve seen boatloads of them. The last good one was The Shallows, but I had high hopes for this one, since the preview made me reluctant (nervous) to see it. I saw it and survived to tell the tale. My verdict is that it’s decent, but not the spectacular fright fest for which I was hoping (and scared I would actually see).
Johannes Roberts’ film goes for universal appeal by utilizing a common premise: a shark-diving expedition in Mexico goes horribly wrong, trapping two female divers underwater in shark-infested waters. Many celebrities and common folk have made excursions just like this one — but this is the nightmare scenario. Deep, dark water (150 feet down), tanks low on air, worries about narcosis, and, of course, immense great white sharks excited by blood in the water. This is exactly the kind of movie that makes it difficult for me to sleep.
Had the movie been done to perfection it could have rivaled Jaws. But while the premise is sound, the film overly exaggerates its menace and cannot quite maintain consistency. The radio between the divers and the ship (and between the divers themselves) sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. It works at the end, for instance, though not beforehand beneath a certain depth. The sharks are simply too big — Captain Taylor (a grizzled Matthew Modine) points out a 20-footer and claims he’s seen a 28-footer (that’s bigger than the one in Jaws, and almost unheard of). And they cannot help but look computer-generated (though still scary).
The urge to survive drives the two divers (Claire Holt and Mandy Moore, portraying unconvincing sisters) outside the cage to call for help, to retrieve air tanks dropped to them, etc. That’s bravery I would not know under the same circumstances; I would never have left the cage. The film had me enthralled until the inconsistencies started to accumulate; I also thought that the shark kill scenes should have been better handled (easier to see, more brutal). A story twist alters everything near the end, providing some of what the audience came to see, but it wasn’t entirely satisfying, and then the end comes very abruptly, without further incident. Put this one down as a near miss, something that should have been truly frightening but wasn’t (there were two good scares for me, and both were in the preview). I should be able to sleep tonight with no problem. I hope. ☆ ☆ 1/2. 20 June 2017.