47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

Trapped in a ruined, underwater city with blind, ravenous sharks? Yes please!

The sequel (that really isn't a sequel at all) to 47 Meters Down shares a title with its predecessor even though the characters are almost certainly not that far down. They are, however, notably "uncaged" as the subtitle declares, if you don't count the crumbling walls and pillars and ceilings of a temple where Central American natives made blood sacrifices as a cage. Whereas the original film straddled a disturbing line between an agoraphobic ocean floor and a claustrophobic sense of darkness and pressure, Uncaged is so claustrophobic it would have been scary enough without the sharks.

Terrible title aside, this movie's fabulously absurd premise -- like so many horror movies -- makes for an effective thrill ride. It's one of those where almost everything that could go wrong does, and you're giggling even as you gasp. A group of young women, alone in an idyllic lagoon that nobody knows about, decide to utilize some scuba gear and investigate the antechamber of the underwater Mayan temple. Of course, they'll just circle around once and come back out, right? That's the plan, until one of them chases a strange-looking fish around a pillar. It screams at her -- yes, the damned thing screams -- and it's so weird and funny I almost forgot what movie I was watching. In her fright, the woman collapses the pillar, separating the girls in blinding sediment and blocking their escape route.

Apparently the collapse also attracts (perhaps opens the way) for predators as well, as suddenly the shape of a great white looms large in the confined space. It's remarkably scary, seeing a gaping maw of jagged teeth approaching you in the dark tunnels with hardly any wiggle room. And while the sharks are, by nature, frightening, these sharks have some additional spooky qualities. Having apparently gone blind in their hellish tunnels, the sharks seem to have a heightened sense of hearing. At least so the pitiful dialogue proclaims multiple times, attributing it to evolution (though I don't think that's how the process works). I had hoped this element would turn the film into a sort of underwater version of Don't Breathe, but it doesn't.

Lost opportunities aside, the film plays out instead like The Descent, if with a larger budget and more spectacular delivery. Director Johannes Roberts has a knack for weird, interesting, and funny images that are also quite disturbing, and they blast out here in full force. My favorite includes a scene in which the women, having found John Corbett's "Dad" character, follow him to an escape route: another isolated sinkhole with a rope to climb. Of course the exhausted girls will have trouble ascending, but when the sharks begin to circle beneath them, one panics and -- a magnificent moment -- flips upside down on the rope so that her head falls into the water and she screams as the shark approaches.

It all gets really weird before it's over, including the completely bonkers inclusion of an underwater whirlpool -- remember, we're supposed to be in a submerged temple -- and I worried briefly we'd have a subterranean sharknado. But the weirdness works if you just let it take you, and we end up with a really fun ride. It could have leaned into its own absurdity more, but isn't that true of all of us?