47 Meters Down: Original Cut

Has anybody else seen the movie 47 Meters Down?

If you haven't then you didn't miss much.

The film is about a woman named Lisa and her sister Kate who while in Mexico go out to watch great white sharks from the safety of a rusty shark cage, as they are about to get out  the cage, its connections to the boat snap, sending the two down to the bottom of the ocean.

The rest of the movie is about Lisa and Kate being trapped down there, running low on oxygen, and being targeted by at least one of the sharks they were watching swim around them.

If you have a fear of the dark parts of the ocean, drowning, dying (alone or otherwise), and of course sharks, then this movie will probably scare the shit out of you.

however the film that was released to theaters has one glaring difference from the version I saw.

An early cut of the film under the Alternate Title "In The Deep" had circulated the internet for a short time, My Friend, who used to pirate films occasionally screened it at a party he threw back in august.

The effects in this cut were unfinished, the sharks looked more like asylum film rejects, and it didn't have a score, but it played out pretty much beat for beat to the theatrical cut until the end.

Spoiler for those who haven't seen the film.

The boat that the cage was attached to, sends them down new Tanks allowing them to refill their oxygen,  but they are warned via radio about potential Nitrogen Narcosis, as Kate tries to give Lisa her replacement tank she is grabbed by the shark, and taken away, most likely eaten.

Lisa then receives a conflicting message on a radio inside her mask that Kate is okay, but bleeding out and surrounded by sharks, The film then goes into a sequence of Lisa saving her sister, having to fight off the Sharks and successfully getting back to the boat...

only for it all to be a hallucination, and Lisa is still in the cage, at the bottom of the ocean, repeating over and over again "we made it Kate"

The theatrical release ends with coast guard divers showing up to rescue her, and she breaches he ocean, with a new lease on life.

In the Deep did not have this, instead the camera keeps zooming out as Lisa slowly goes insane...

The camera gets far enough away you can only see the lights from the cage, as they suddenly shut off.

The credits Roll over Lisa hysterically laughing, with sentence fragments implying that her hallucinations are getting worse.

Midway through the credits A beeping noise is heard, and we start to hear Lisa's laughs get more strained, finally she makes a wheezing sound, and then it is only silence for the rest of the credits.

The people at the party, myself included were chilled by this ending, and I'll give In The Deep respect for going out on possibly the lowest note it could.

I've tried to do research into why the ending was changed, but All I found was an interview with the director saying that a cut of the film with that ending exists, but it was scrapped because he and the producers thought it was too bleak.

Watching In the Deep again I noticed something odd...

Lisa was played by actress Mandy Moore, but the voice changes when Lisa begins to "die", the audio quality even goes down significantly.

I can't prove it, but I think the reason In The Deep's Ending was changed and why it worked so well at unsettling myself and the other party-goers, was because we were hearing someone actually suffocate.