47 Meters Down

It’s hard to bond underwater. So when it comes to establishing characters, heavy breathing 47 Meters Down  ain’t gonna cut it.

The film dives right in, as it were, with a mishap: two divers, sisters Kate and Lisa (Claire Holt and Mandy Moore) are stuck at the bottom of the sea (where Ringo star would rather be) when a winch malfunctions and their shark cage plummets to the very well-lit depths.

More properly called 40 Meters Down (the danger limit of experienced divers with respect to nitrogen narcosis) the film is caught between dual impulses: survivalist horror and animal attack. To the extent that it succeeds at neither, is surprising.

Their oxygen-tanks work the same way a ticking time bomb does in a spy movie, a plot device that should keep things headed in the right direction as far as interest is concerned. But again, with so little invested in Kate or Lisa it’s hard to take any more than a detached interest in the proceedings.They yak a bit on the boat, and are condescended to by the Mexican crew. Even when the sharks inevitably appear, it doesn’t spark any drama.

What’s most galling about 47 Meters Down, is that sharks aren’t even needed. Two people trapped in darkness is enough, or should be enough, to propel a narrative in the right hands.

When it comes to underwater suspense, Dario Argento gives us a master class engaging all of the senses in his 1980 opus, Inferno. There, the silence followed by the deadened “drip drip” of the soundtrack and angelic surrealism primes the pump for a bona fide floating corpse scare — when Rose explores the watery depths of a New York City basement. In the hands of director Johannes Roberts, there’s no sense of depth in either sense of the word.

One of the most terrifying aspects of the deep blue sea, is the unrelenting almost existential darkness, something it shares with space. In the superior Open Water, the threshold of what’s on terra firm and the evil down below is played up. When the lost and exhausted divers in Open Water come up for air, there’s gasping terror of near drowning, and when they sink under the waves, there’s the threat of being attacked from the underside by sharks.

Spielberg had a good handle on this too in Jaws, giving us time to come up for air as the narrative unspools.

47 Meters Down by contrast, is waterlogged crapola, redeemed sorta by an OK ending.

** (out of 5)

[check out our podcast of 47 Meters Down!]

Longshot

What’s next, a nail-biter about air hockey? Longshot is a feature-length (!) film about…foosball.

Jesus, Bald-headed Christ. Of all the misguided, stupid, pointless, obscure, un-marketable, premises for a flick…this has to take the cake.

Leif Garrett is Paul Rodgers. He wants to be the next Lionel Messi/Cristiano Ronaldo. An actual footballer. But for his field of dreams to be realized, he needs to finance a trip to Europe to train.* This requires seed money. So he turns his attention to that ultimate cash-cow: the foosball tournament circuit.

Who knew this would be so lucrative?

When people think foosball, they think being drunk. It’s a bar parlor game at establishments, large and loud enough to accommodate such things. And you’d have to have been under the influence to conceive of, and then finance such a film.

Paul passes on a scholarship to a US college and along with pal Leroy, plans an excursion to Lake Tahoe, the apparent epicenter of the Table Football universe.

Unfortunately, Leroy injures his spinning hand (um). So Paul enlists the help of 13-year old Maxine. Because that’s what 18-year-olds do, they cross state lines with minors and stay in motel rooms with them. WTF?

That’s a proposition that beggars belief. Much like passing on a scholarship at your post-secondary education to take a chance on some dopey tournament. Unless your competition had thalidomide arms, it’d probably be anyone’s game.

We podcasted Manos: The Hands of Fate, one of the most boring films ever committed to celluloid. And this is that film’s easy rival. It’s agonizing on every level you know, and on some you don’t. It’s impossible to make a filmable movie about foosball. Trust.

* (out of 5)

[Check out our podcast discussion of Longshot!]

[*Editors’ note: being 18+ is a little late in the game to be a professional footballer. Major clubs have academies and there are youth clubs, so if you’re an American eyeballing the beautiful game…you should probably start a decade earlier than Leif does here!]