“WHERE ARE THEIR PHOOOOOOOOOONES?!?” was a constant question Kim and I were asking (I’ll explain later) when watching this idiotic, moronic, stupid, full of shit shark sequel. 47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED really tests the patience and intelligence of its audience. I have never been more bored watching four dumb idiotic teenage girls screaming for their lives, traveling through long claustrophobic tunnels with their asses hanging out of their thin bikini bottoms. I wanted all of their characters to die within 10 minutes of the film, and the only reason why I didn’t walk out of this movie, is because I don’t feel like I can review a film for ya’ll unless I watch the entire thing, and I was with a good friend….and the experiences ended up being worth it because film ended up breaking us….into huge fits of laughs and giggles at the very end (again, I’ll explain later). Uncaged is easily the worst shark film since Jaws: The Revenge, and yes, that thought includes Sharknado. Oh, and it’s easily one of the worst films of 2019. Shark tooth to my eye though I’d watch this again before Sextuplets.
This film, while being a sequel to the first one from 2017, is really just a sequel in name only. Mandy Moore isn’t back, it’s a whole new situation, and doesn’t involve people in cages (hence the title). The story features four dumb ass annoying teen girls that sneak off to a secluded little swimming spot no one else knows about in Mexico. This spot was found by one of the teens’ dad, who is in charge of mapping out this secret Mayan underwater city that his job just currently found. They decide since that Dad is farther away attending to a new entrance discovered a day before, that they will take his teams scuba gear and just do a quick in and out little excursion. Yet they get scared of a little blind fish yelling at them (I shit you not) and accidentally cause a cave-in and the entrance to the place is blocked. With limited air and limited time they have got to find a way out…all while avoiding these weird blind albino great white sharks that happened to live, evolve, and grow in these ancient tunnels. Who lives? Who dies? Who gives a shit? Because literally every tense and jump shot moment were stolen from other much, much, much better shark attack films. No originality whatsoever here.
The first 47 Meters Down was okay until one of the stupidest twist endings of all time completely shattered whatever benefit of the doubt I was giving it. Oh, and Mandy Moore and Claire Holt were actually half way decent actresses with the limited range the script gave for their characters. While it doesn’t have a stupid twist ending, it has a regular laughable one, and everyone’s character here sucks ass. Whenever one of their mouths opened, it was like they were screeching really loud in my ears, so much so I wanted to take the main protagonist girls’ shark tooth she had in her pocket and cut my own ears off. It was just complaining, bitching, dumb decision making, and constant screaming. Jamie Foxx’s and Sylvestor Stallone’s daughters play two of the main four protagonists here, and some back door dealing had to have been made to get them the roles, because they were absolutely abysmal and I hope they never get hired to act again. John Corbett (you know who he is even if you don’t) gets the coveted ‘and’ title in the credits, and is in it just enough to spout of a few lines as himself and then even try and steal Samuel L. Jackson’s famous speech and scene in Deep Blue Sea.
And that’s the third big problem of this film, other than the boredom and the acting, is that all of its thrills are stolen from other shark movies. A shark kills a person, and Kim and I would constantly guess when exactly the mangled body would float up and scare a different character, which isn’t anything new in a shark movie. I already mentioned above that they completely rip off Samuel L. Jackson’s moment in Deep Blue Sea. They also even rip off another moment from that film when a character finds a sharp object to stab the shark and escape while being held in the great white’s mouth. All of the jump scares are cheap and always accompanied loud, annoying, crescendo bang to the musical score to try and make you jump in your seat. The film rips off the Stephen King adaptation 1408 by trying to make the song sung by The Carpenters creepy again. A character fires a flare gun at a shark, etc. etc. etc. There is not an original bone in this films’ body. The Mayan caves aren’t even that interesting to look at.
While the sharks look okay, the rest of the CGI (including that small blind fish that scared the girls) is abysmal. There is this one scene near the end where the characters that managed to survive at that point have to go through this giant current tunnel thing. You can completely tell that the girls are in just a steady and calm location while “acting” and post production just lazily floods most of the rest of the screen with fast moving CGI water bubbles to make it seem like the sea is hectic around them. Completely unconvincing. You really have to suspend your belief with some of the shit that goes on in this film. And eventually, at the very, very end, the film both broke Kim and I with uncontrollable unintentional laughter. Near the beginning of the film, the teenagers have to walk a long, long way from their cars to get to this little water paradise spot. When they get there, they sort of high up, and instead of taking the path to lead them to the surface of the water, they just happily jump in. WHERE ARE THEIR PHOOOOOOONES?!?!? Did they leave them in their car? There is absolutely no explanatory dialogue either, no “we’ll just leave our phones in the car because we won’t be long” or “We need to leave our phones in the car so our parents can’t track us” and not even a “we’ll leave our phones in the car because we won’t get a signal at this place anyway and don’t want them to get wet.” Nothing, made absolutely no sense.
Then throughout the movie, there is a bunch of foreshadowed shit that Kim and I leaned over to each other and either just said “foreshadowing” or “this will come back later” and sure enough, we were right…but instead of spreading out these payoffs to the set ups evenly and all throughout the film, THEY ALL COME BACK IN THE LAST 5 MINUTES. Hence why it broke us. Especially the last one where I called what would happen with a certain shark tooth that was introduced only five minutes into the film. Once we knew it was about to come back on screen, it was uncontrollable giggles until the end credits. So which is better, the first one or Uncaged? No clear winner, they are both nasty shark chum. I looked up to see what other bullshit writer/director Johannes Roberts has done other than these two shark movies, and lo and behold…he also did the sequel to The Strangers: Prey at Night, which also had a bunch of idiotic shit like this film did. And he’s done other shit that I haven’t seen because all of his filmography is poorly reviewed. Good riddance. I really hope they don’t make another, but mark my words, we’ll probably see a third one green lit soon. But maybe not, maybe there is a chance that his career be attacked this shark and be buried at sea forever. This was one….dumb ass shark doo doo doo doo doo doo.
Zach's Zany Movie Reviews 