47 Meters Down: Uncaged may be a bit slight in the script department and features some cartoonish aquatic beasts, but it delivers non-stop, anxiety-inducing terror once it reaches its halfway point.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Barry Hertz
There are small spurts of creativity ... but everything else about the production feels more watered down than the landscape our four interchangeable leads find themselves flailing about in.
It’s refreshing to see a genre film-maker do more than rely on simple tricks and although his knack for dialogue might be questionable, he’s more than capable of constructing a nifty set-piece.
The film more or less keeps things efficiently moving, wringing white-knuckle tension less through jump scares than from the darkness of a seemingly infinite void.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Set disbelief aside, and primal phobias may well suffice to get you happily to the other side of this adventure.
The Associated Press by Mark Kennedy
Roberts has clearly been given a bigger budget and it shows in the nicely realized submerged city the poor young women must navigate. He’s saddled with a terrible film title — 47 meters was the depth of the ocean floor in the first film — but none of that matters once the air tanks and masks go on.
We Got This Covered by Matt Donato
47 Meters Down is still the alpha of this franchise pack, but Uncaged's stealth "slasher but with sharks" structure is an approved and entertaining surprise.
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
Uncaged improves on the first film only with its ending: This one boasts a modestly effective twist rather than a truly moronic one. Encouraging, but not nearly enough to justify a third trip down this 47-meter well.
It takes a lot of chops to shoot the majority of a movie underwater, and Johannes Roberts is a skillful crafter of images ... But he’s a throw-what-he-can-at-the-audience director, and there’s little in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged that really sticks. The shocks, however, are consistently well-timed, and for the audience that seeks out a movie like this one that’s probably enough.
Roberts populates convincingly elaborate underwater sets with a suitably appealing cast for a claustrophobic adventure that manages to deliver some real terror before it somewhat inevitably levels up into absurdity.