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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Hollywood’s latest shark thriller sure to scare you

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Javier Tovar -


More than 40 years ago, Americans were afraid to go into the water as Jaws scared the daylights out of a generation of ocean swimmers. Hollywood is hoping for a repeat this summer with the movie 47 Meters Down.


There have been more than 50 shark movies since Steven Spielberg made cinematic history with Jaws in 1975.


This year’s shark movie, which will open in the US on June 16, takes place almost entirely under water.


Sisters Lisa and Kate — played by Mandy Moore and Claire Holt — are on vacation in the Gulf of California, and it becomes clear they should avoid climbing aboard a flimsy boat belonging to Taylor (Matthew Modine).


They also probably should not get inside Taylor’s rusty shark cage to plunge into the water and observe the predators up close.


The two young women with little diving experience find themselves in the dark with less than an hour of air in their oxygen tanks — surrounded, of course, by hungry sharks.


“What I found far more terrifying is the prospect and premise of drowning, of running out of air,” Moore told reporters.


“Director Johannes Roberts decided that once the women plunged into the ocean there was no need for scenes on the surface.


“I had no interest in going back to reaction shots with Taylor and the other boys on the boat,” he said.


“Imagine if in Gravity, you kept cutting to ground control. It would have killed the movie,” he said, referring to the 2013 Oscar-winning film about astronauts stranded in space.


For the film, Moore and Holt therefore spent eight hours a day for eight weeks inside a six-metre deep water tank.


47 Meters Down was filmed mainly in sun-deprived Britain, far from Mexico’s bright Pacific coast.


Last year, just 81 unprovoked shark attacks were reported worldwide, according to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF).


None were reported in Mexico. The chances of being attacked by a shark are nearly one in four million, according to the International Wildlife Museum based in Tucson, Arizona. — AFP


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