“All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl,” Jean-Luc Godard famously said. But sometimes, all you need for a movie is a shark and a girl, as last year’s “The Shallows” proved: Jaume Collet-Serra’s thriller basically just had those two ingredients, and yet proved to be one of the most slickly entertaining and knuckle-bitingly tense studio movies of 2016. And one of the most profitable, too.
So it’s not surprising that someone else is trying to repeat the formula this summer, in the shape of “47 Meters Down.” Directed by Johannes Roberts, the film stars Mandy Moore and Claire Holt (“The Vampire Diaries”) as two friends on vacation in Mexico who decide to go shark-diving. But once in the protective cage, the rope tethering them to the boat snaps, and they’re left on the ocean floor, their oxygen running out and hungry Great Whites swimming all around.
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It’s a pleasingly efficient set-up for a thriller, taking the minimalism of “The Shallows” and adding some claustrophobia to the mix, and while it’s unlikely to win any awards, it could turn out to be a bit of a summer sleeper. Also starring “Stranger Things” villain Matthew Modine, it’ll open on June 16th, and you can watch the trailer below.
