Saved from straight-to-DVD purgatory at the last minute and given a theatrical release, the 2017 sleeper hit “47 Meters Down” was an elegantly directed, well-acted, and surprisingly compelling thriller about two sisters stuck in a cage being terrorized by sharks. Its sequel, “47 Meters Down: Uncaged,” with its silly scenario, irritating characters, and garbled action, plays like a rebuke of the earlier film.

This time, it’s another set of sisters (played by Corinne Foxx and Sophie Nelisse) reluctantly joining two other girls from school (Brianne Tju and Sistine Stallone) for an impromptu cave dive in a secret cove in the Yucatán. They don state-of-the-art scuba gear and plunge in, only to get trapped in a long-buried city of the dead, where they come across a type of shark that has evolved in the darkness without eyesight but with other, highly attuned senses.