You just can’t beat a good killer shark movie. From Jaws onwards the genre has been a mainstay of cinema, with sharks making for reliably terrifying movie monsters and the coastal setting a fantastic excuse to show pretty Hollywood stars frolicking in swimming costumes. The latest entry in this busy genre is 47 Meters Down, whose newest trailer dropped earlier today.
Seen above, it shows Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt) enjoying a happy, danger-free holiday in the sun. As they’re assured it’s “perfectly safe” (which really sets alarm bells ringing in a movie like this), they decide to spice up the holiday by going diving with sharks. Matthew Modine’s grizzled sailor pops them in a slightly rickety shark cage and plops them in the water with ‘the biggest shark they’ve ever seen.’ Naturally, it all goes tits up about five minutes later, and they’re left trapped on the sea floor, low on oxygen, and surrounded by hungry sharks.
But wait a minute, doesn’t this all sound a little familiar? It was just last year that The Shallows was released, a well-received genre flick in which Blake Lively was pursued by a very hungry Great White. Oh well, I guess ‘yer basic killer shark movie is going to contain some of the same elements, especially if it’s generally hewing to reality in how it presents the toothy beasties.
All the same, this looks like it’ll be an enjoyably cheesy monster movie with a firm grasp on genre conventions. The trailer shows that the shark FX are up to scratch and Matthew Modine looks to be having fun doing a miniature Robert Shaw impression. Shark me up!
47 Meters Down swims into cinemas on June 16th.
