okay so i finally got around to watching this last night and honestly? kinda slaps for what it is lol... went in expecting to half pay attention on my phone the whole time and ended up actually locked in, which says a lot for a movie i wasn't hyped about going in.
So quick rundown... five friends go to thailand for one last trip before real adult life starts, they book this cave swimming tour, storm hits, caves flood, they're trapped, and turns out there's a shark down there with them that's basically adapted to hunting in pitch black water. that's it, that's the whole movie. very simple setup but it works way better than it has any right to.
what got me is apparently they actually filmed like 85% of this thing underwater for real, no green screen tricks, the actors did their own diving and climbing and everything, even a whole cliff jump they wanted to fake but the director was like nah let's just do it for real. and honestly you can FEEL that while watching it, it doesn't have that fake cgi-heavy vibe a lot of shark movies have these days where you can tell it's all rendered. felt way more tense because of it, like there's an actual physical weight to how everyone moves in the water.
kathryn newton and lana condor are the leads and i actually didn't know until after that they almost got swapped roles, like the director cast them opposite of what people expected and it's a cool little choice honestly. newton's character starts off kinda always getting talked over by her friend and you watch her slowly toughen up as things go wrong, which i thought was a nice touch instead of just screaming and running the whole time like a lot of these movies do. condor's character is more the dominant one of the friend group and it was interesting seeing her play against her usual roles too.
the rest of the friend group (gavin casalegno, nico hiraga, tommi rose) all do their part too, nobody's carrying dead weight here, and there's some old drama between a couple of them that bubbles up while they're trying not to die which honestly added a little more to care about than just "who's getting eaten next."
not gonna lie the plot itself isn't doing anything crazy new, it's basically your standard "trapped with a predator" setup, nothing you haven't seen before if you've watched any shark or cave horror movie ever made. i saw critics weren't super into it either, and yeah i get some of the criticism, some side characters don't get a ton to work with and a couple lines felt a bit cheesy ngl, especially some of the "we need to stick together" type speeches.
but honestly i wasn't watching this for a masterclass in writing lol, i just wanted a fun tense watch and that's exactly what i got. the darkness/lighting stuff actually added a lot of tension too, you don't see the shark clearly most of the time which made it scarier tbh, way better than just throwing cgi shark in your face every five minutes like some of these movies do. there's something about barely seeing the thing hunting you that just hits different than a clear well-lit shot of a big rubbery cgi shark.
pacing wise it moves pretty quick too, doesn't drag in the middle which i was kinda worried about going in since a lot of these "trapped" movies start feeling repetitive after a while. this one keeps throwing new problems at the group so it never really slows down.
would i watch again? probably yeah, good popcorn horror flick, perfect for a friday night with snacks and low expectations. nothing groundbreaking, don't go in expecting some deep meaningful film, but it does what it sets out to do and does it well.
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Rating: 80/100
Originally posted through scrobble.life/movies.
