Hook, line and sinker,47 Metres Down is a stinker, a John Dory of two sisters, Americans, whose holiday of a lifetime becomes a living nightmare when they become trapped in a shark observation cage at the bottom of the ocean in Mexico.

Hello! Mexico? Could this be the first bit of Hollywood halibut inspired by the great trout, Trump? Forget the wall, here’s a great idea, let’s put up a shark net between America and Mexico. Really great!

With oxygen running low and great white sharks circling, it becomes a race for survival for these two siblings, one an adventurous party girl, the other a sedate bore, a prim and proper whose lack of challenge has cost her her marriage. Trouble is, the film itself runs out of puff, a lack of narrative oxygen afflicting the film with a fatal case of the bends.

Inexplicably, the film opened to an impressive US$11.5 million at the US box office, and is currently at US$42 million, and is the highest grossing independent film of the year. Such mediocrity seems to be reigning in the US at the moment. Or is it they just want to make the great white great again?

Directed by Johannes Roberts the film stars Australian Claire Holt and Mandy Moore with Matthew Modine as a gringo captain of a rust bucket enterprise.

As scary as a tin of sardines, 47 METERS DOWN is the cinematic equivalent to a race to the bottom – and it wins – fins down.