Watch one of the best killer shark thrillers ever before it leaves Netflix

When it comes to shark movies, there are tiers, not rankings. There’s Jaws, all on its own at the very top, then a few genuinely great thrillers like The Shallows hanging around, and a bottom tier of absolute trash that should really never see the sun. But in between those last two is the vaunted, excellent category of silly shark movies that still kick ass. And it’s at exactly that depth you’ll find the ludicrously fun 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, which leaves Netflix on Saturday. 

While this movie is technically a sequel to 47 Meters Down, don’t sweat it. The only thing the two movies share is that they’re about people who end up on the wrong end of sharks. 

Uncaged follows Mia, a teenage girl who’s being raised by her dad and stepmother. She has a somewhat tense relationship with her stepsister, Sasha, and Sasha’s friends. When the family goes on a trip, Mia drags Sasha and friends to a beautiful secluded diving spot near a sunken Mayan city the sisters’ dad has been restoring. The movie’s teenage drama is surprisingly effective, giving us a few characters worth rooting for, and at least one worth rooting against, but it isn’t until the girls get a little too curious and decide to go exploring in the underwater city that things get really good. 

Director Johannes Roberts (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City) understands that we know the premise of the movie (teens get attacked by shark), and uses this as an excuse to fill every single one of the movie’s many underwater scenes with as much tension as possible. Uncaged feels like it’s constantly threatening a shark attack, even before the movie’s main shark starts chasing its stars, as Roberts slowly lets the camera drift and swim behind the characters. The whole approach gives the film a delightful, giddy atmosphere of slasher dread, with the feeling that a killer could be waiting around every corner. 

But a movie made only of pure anticipation wouldn’t be much fun, and Roberts knows that too. He punctuates Uncaged with some very fun jump scares of a shark coming out of nowhere to either eat an unsuspecting teen, or simply menace them into swimming a little faster. Roberts gives the film an excellent sense of rhythm, building or releasing these moments of tension at just the right time. 

For all the movie’s excellent and fun scares, however, the real star of the show is the shark at its center. You wouldn’t expect a submerged Mayan city to have just any shark, and you’d be very right. Instead, the massive shark that chases these teens is blind and exceptionally terrifying, with typically gigantic teeth and a pale white exterior marked by unexplained cuts and wounds. Roberts uses the shark’s blindness as yet another clever way to play with our expectations — and more importantly, gives the movie’s characters some very creative ways to escape death. 

Of course, the movie has plenty more twists up its sleeve than just a blind shark, but each one is a little more fun if we leave them unspoiled. We’ll instead leave it at this: 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, is a gory, ridiculous, great time to its very last moments, which makes it a killer entry in the silly tier of shark thrillers. Make sure to check it out before it leaves Netflix. 

47 Meters Down: Uncaged leaves Netflix February 15. It is also streaming on Prime Video.