47 meters deep“little” blockbuster shark movie
In 2017, the horror thriller 47 meters deep is noticed. Directed by the British Johannes Roberts, it immerses the viewer with Lisa and Kate, two sisters who have gone off to dive a cage among great white sharks. The cast includes Mandy Moore and Claire Holt as Lisa and Kate, plus Matthew Modine as the boat captain, Taylor.
As Lisa struggles to recover from her heartbreak, her sister Kate takes her on a vacation to Mexico to distract her. Hungry for adventure, they dare to dive among white sharks, protected by a cage. Once in the water, the view is incredible. But suddenly, the cable that holds the cage to the boat gives way, and the two sisters find themselves sinking to the bottom of the ocean, 47 meters deep…
Often terrifying, playing with just the right dosage of jump scarespanting, 47 meters deep succeeds in his gamble, accumulating a total box office of 5.3 million dollars on a budget of 5.3 million dollars 62 million revenue dollars. And how all right survival self respectful, 47 meters deep does not let its viewer leave the experience unscathed by offering a particularly cruel and disturbing end.
The correct use of an unreliable narrative
It is assumed when we hear, read or watch a story that it is authentic. So let’s put our trust in the narrator of the story, who really tells what is happening, without lie. This principle of narration reliability is circumvented, distorted, explored from time to time. Perhaps the most famous contemporary example in cinema is Usual suspectswhere the narrator of the story invents everything and deceives the viewer.
In 47 meters deepJohannes Roberts toyed with this idea of unreliable storytelling, presenting a first ending… too good to be true. Indeed, in the last moments of the film, the two sisters finally manage to re-emerge. While Lisa thought her sister had been eaten by a shark, she miraculously survived and together they join the boat. As they are being hauled aboard, Kate is again attacked in the leg but she manages, by injuring the shark in her eye, to get rid of her. Cured, safe, the two sisters survived. But Lisa realizes that she’s bleeding from her hand, and that blood escapes into the air…
The reality is really quite different. Taken by the intoxication of the depths, the narcosis, we then discover Lisa in full hallucination and still alone at the bottom of the water, immobilized by the cage that blocks her leg. Rescuers arrive and bring her back to the surface, where she notices Kate did not survive the great white shark attack, and that he was hallucinating the rest. A successful final twist, cruel, where the viewer can only be deceived. Johannes Roberts explained to Crave online :
I had to fight, a lot. I had to fight to keep this ending, this way of ending. It’s certainly a very bold way to conclude. But yeah, there were a lot of different ideas during production, but this one suddenly became obvious. It was the best way to end. We really fought for it.
Only one survivor… instead of none
Originally, another ending was envisaged, even more disturbing. An ending that has a lot to do with that of a very successful horror film: The downhill. In this one, we follow a group of young women who have gone spelunking. In addition to the dangers inherent in the practice, underground creatures appear and decimate the group. It is believed that one of them survives, but in reality it is to better suffer the fact that she too is hallucinated, and is still lost and locked up underground, the creatures that surround her…
It’s the same kind of ending that Johannes Roberts had also planned, so much so that the film ends with Lisa, still stuck at the bottom, and dead.
We only shot it with a camera moving away from her, dead, and it was so sad! I liked this ending but it was already so dark that it still had to end with a touch of optimism.
Indeed, it would have been devilishly cruel if neither of the two heroines of 47 meters deep don’t make it. Not to mention the pitfalls that would have presented themselves to the narration, and therefore to the credibility of the story: how to tell a survival story if there is no survivor?
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
