There are 5 big deaths in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, and the 47 Meters Down sequel's great white sharks ensure each of these demises is hard to forget.
While there may only be a mere five death scenes in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, the 47 Meters Down sequel still ensures that most of these demises pack a pretty vicious punch. Since director Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws warned viewers to stay out of the water in 1975, shark movies have been one of the most reliably popular monster movie sub-genres. Whenever Hollywood wants to make a quick buck, studios can always turn to the open water, as evidenced by the 2011-2012 success of Bait 3D and Shark Night 3D and the 2016-2017 success of The Shallows and 47 Meters Down.
Despite these two sets of dueling shark movies arriving within a year of each other, all of these turned a tidy profit thanks to the perennial appeal of the sub-genre. 47 Meters Down even managed to net itself a sequel in 2019 with 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. While the dark twist ending of 47 Meters Down meant that the original movie’s heroines couldn’t return for the sequel, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged was able to introduce viewers to a whole slew of new shark chum in the form of Alexa, Nicole, Mia, Sasha, Carl, Ben, and Grant.
5 Carl
The second character to be killed off in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, Carl was also the recipient of the sequel’s lamest exit. The biggest issue with Carl’s demise is that, like so many PG-13 horror movies' scariest scenes, his death takes place entirely offscreen. As a result, viewers barely get to know Khylin Rhambo’s thinly-sketched character before he is last seen listening to blaring music underwater, blissfully unaware that the vibrations his tunes are producing are attracting a nearby blind cave shark. Whether CGI or real, shark movies at least need sharks onscreen to make their kills impressive, and this is what makes Carl’s underwhelming exit the worst death in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged.
4 Ben
Ben's death is the first kill in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, and while it is an effective jump scare, the scene loses points among horror movie aficionados for its murky lighting. Seeing a massive great white shark ambushing Ben and dragging him off mid-sentence makes for a terrifying jolt, but the subsequent grey blur could hardly be called chilling. While the Jaws movies famously failed when focusing on their fake sharks, this doesn’t mean that a 2019 movie can get away with hiding its aquatic killer offscreen. As a result, Ben’s death feels like a cost-cutting missed opportunity.
3 Grant
While no shark movie could outdo Samuel L Jackson’s iconic Deep Blue Sea death scene, the first great death in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged come close in an inspired jump scare that pays homage to the sequence. While John Corbett’s grilled Grant is midway through explaining to Alexa, Mia, and Sasha how they might hope to escape this hopeless situation with their lives and limbs intact, he is suddenly yanked out of the water by a massive great white shark that attacks from below. Since this leviathan bursts out of the water beneath Grant, the death scene finally gives viewers a decent look at 47 Meters Down: Uncaged’s villain.
Credit where it is due, in this sequence, the 47 Meters Down sequel delivers. Unlike the sharks of the Jaws movies, this great white is a pretty convincing CGI creation, and the shortcomings of the villain’s appearance are effectively covered up by how sudden and brutal Grant’s exit is. Corbett’s Grant seems to be the only character with enough diving experience to potentially save the sequel’s heroines, so his 47 Meters Down: Uncaged death is a genuine shock. Not only that, but the fact that the scene doesn’t occur until over halfway through the runtime of 47 Meters Down: Uncaged means that the only extraneous characters are already gone.
2 Alexa
While Grant’s death proves that no one is safe in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, it is Alexa’s demise that truly stings. Unlike the sequel’s under-prepared heroines Sasha and Mia, Alexa is resourceful, friendly, clever, and willing to risk her life to help the rest of the doomed divers escape. Unfortunately, in an unexpectedly dark twist that subverts the traditional slasher movie’s Final Girl cliche, Alexa’s good behavior doesn’t result in her survival. Instead, she earns the saddest death of the entire sequel. First, a shark grabs Alexa by her breathing apparatus, trapping her underwater in a narrow stone column.
Then, when the ever-resourceful Alexa has managed to wrangle her way out of the breathing apparatus, she swims for the surface. However, as she has taken off her breathing kit, Alexa doesn’t last long in the freezing depths. So instead of a surprise shark attack cutting her death short and putting Tju’s character out of her misery, viewers are forced to watch as the most likable character in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged slowly expires from lack of oxygen. She is the only cast member not killed by a shark in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. Alexa also gets an entirely unearned and particularly nasty death in the 47 Meters Down sequel.
1 Nicole
While Alexa’s death might be the most mean-spirited demise in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, it is not the most brutal moment in the sequel. That honor goes to the uniquely unlikable Nicole, who almost escapes a watery grave when she opts to leave the rest of the group behind. As Alexa attempts to climb to safety and get help, a panicked Nicole grabs her rope and ends up dragging the group’s hope for survival down into the water. Leaving Alexa behind, Nicole successfully climbs out, only to grip a loose rock on her way to freedom and fall backward into the water below. What follows is comfortably 47 Meters Down: Uncaged’s best death.
Nicole’s slow-motion descent into the dark, shark-infested waters is followed by a brutal moment that sees the unfortunate character torn in two by a pair of feuding sharks while she’s still alive. Sharks have been known to engage in feeding frenzies in reality, and Nicole is gruesomely bisected in a harsh example of this phenomenon, with two sharks pulling her upper and lower half in opposing directions as she desperately tries to swim to safety. It’s the darkest moment in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged and arguably the best death in the 47 Meters Down franchise, let alone the sequel.
More: Why Vanessa Kirby Is In 47 Meters Down Images Despite Not Being In The Film
