Editorials
[Interview] Mandy Moore and Claire Holt Dive Deep into ’47 Meters Down’
This isn’t your typical shark movie. It’s been forty years since Jaws kept people out of the water, and by now, we’ve learned what to expect from summer thrillers that take place in dangerous offshore territories. There have been a few noteworthy standouts and fun little additions over the years, such as Chris Kentis’ suspenseful Open Water, in which art mimics the real-life terrors of scuba diving couple Tom and Eileen Lonergan, and the more recent and more light-hearted Blake Lively-led The Shallows. However, whereas the majority of killer shark movies take place mainly on the ocean’s surface, Johannes Roberts’ 47 Meters Down stands out due to the majority of the film existing almost entirely underwater.
“When we both initially read the script, it was like, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen a movie like this before that takes place primarily underwater. In that sense, we were kind of guinea pigs. Because no one knew, like, what effects is eight weeks every day underwater going to have,” explains Mandy Moore. “I don’t think either of us realized how physically taxing it was going to be, just all that time underwater. Even just like the littlest movements, or the seemingly simple days. We would get out at lunchtime, and I’m not usually a napper, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was so exhausted.”
In the film, Lisa (Mandy Moore) takes her sister Kate (Claire Holt) on the trip of a lifetime, down to Mexico’s beautiful blue waters and sandy white beaches, in an attempt to bounce back from a bad break up. Lisa confides in her sister that the real reason why her boyfriend left her is because she wasn’t giving him the excitement he craved in life, and Kate takes it as a personal mission to prove him wrong. Within a few short days, the girls are strapped up in scuba gear, sailing out to sea on a small boat with two new handsome friends, and getting ready to step foot into a rickety cage that will plummet them 20 meters down beneath the surface that they can go swimming with giant sharks. It all seems to be going perfectly – the cute boys, the new exhilarating adventure, the possible Instagram-worthy vacay pictures – that is, until the cage that’s holding the girls breaks, plunging them 47 meters down, where they become trapped at the bottom of the ocean, with only an hour’s worth of oxygen left in their tanks, and hungry predators swimming fiercely just overhead.
“I think this movie sort of goes above just being a shark movie,” says Mandy Moore regarding her interest in the film. “What initially attracted both of us to this was, and what I find far more terrifying is the prospect and premise of drowning, of running out of air and it’s a race against the clock. Like, that to me, ugh, is like my greatest fear. That’s far more terrifying than sharks, which are terrifying enough. And I love that this film, it’s about a confluence all those things. It is just an absolute tragedy. It is a horrible confluence of events that lands these girls at the bottom of the ocean, trapped in a cage with no control and very little way to make it to the surface and survive.”
Most movies require their actors to go through rehearsals, and although the specific methods vary from filmmaker to filmmaker, but when it came time to prepare to film 47 Meters Down, the girls had to go through quite unusual methods in order to get ready to shoot underwater scenes, fully submerged, for up to over an hour at a time.
“Those masks were like 20 pounds and it would hurt your neck, and the BCD and the tank were like another 40 pounds,” remembers Moore about her experience on set. “It was cumbersome. We would have like a little mock sort of rickety wooden cage and we would go in and just do these bare-bones rehearsals and sort of figure out a bit of choreography. But then you then down there and it all goes out the window. It just completely changes and you end up doing what feels right.”
Apparently, Holt and Moore were the only ones that could communicate with other when they had their masks on, so they had to rely heavily on each other for safety measures, as well as for direction.
“We had the majority of our face covered by this mask,” emphasizes Holt. “We didn’t know what would read, we didn’t know how big we had to be or whether it was too much, too little, and I think as an actor you’re always conscious of measuring your performance and having peaks and valleys. We really relied on each other with that. You know, ‘Was that too much? Did I overdo that, or could you read that?’ It was really difficult.”
When asked if there were any moments during filming all of those terrifying underwater scenes which came to be a little too close for comfort, Moore and Holt recalled Holt’s character Kate having to take her mask and BCD off for minutes at a time to try to escape the cage. Holt just hoped she could hold her breath long enough to pull off a convincing performance, while simultaneously remaining calm enough not to drown.
“She was such a badass about it,” says Moore as she recalls her co-star Holt’s bravery. “She was like, ‘Oh you need it again? Oh, one more time?’ (shrugs) But we’re 20 feet underwater, and she literally took off her mask and she took off her BCD, and then swims through the thing and I hand it to her, and it’s like … And you did that so many times, and then you have to be able to get your mask back on and clear it in order to breathe again, and so … I don’t know how you did that. I was really freaked out for you.”
“I was pretty nervous at the beginning when I thought about doing that,” reminisces Holt, wide-eyed. “But we just had really great people around us and I knew that I would always be safe, and I knew that someone may be there to stick a regulator in my mouth if I couldn’t clear my mask, or if I was running out of air.”
Although Holt claims she felt completely taken care of by director Roberts and crew, when asked if she’d be getting back into diving gear again anytime soon, Holt immediately responded with a laugh and a resounding no.
“Hell no!” Holt says enthusiastically with a happy grin. “I think I’ve done enough diving to last a lifetime, but never say never.”
47 Meters Down swims into theaters everywhere on June 16th, 2017.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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