Movie Reviews

In a lot of ways, Open Water reminded me of The Blair Witch Project. Both are horror/suspense films designed to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible, as their small groups of protagonists try to survive in the unfortunate situations they've found themselves in. Both are very low-budget indie-style films, made with handheld cameras and shot 'on location' with no artificial lighting or sets. And both are acted in a very 'realistic' and low-key style, with dialogue that doesn't sound scripted.

In a couple of important ways, though, Open Water didn't remind me of The Blair Witch Project: it wasn't very scary, and it wasn't very good (now, now... we can discuss the merits of The Blair Witch Project some other time).

The "unfortunate situation" that Daniel and Susan (Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan) find themselves in in Open Water involves being left behind on a scuba-diving trip in the shark-infested waters of the Caribbean. Thereafter, the entire rest of the film takes place in the middle of the ocean, with the only characters being two bobbing heads floating in the waves, talking and arguing with each other, hoping that they'll be rescued, and afraid that those pesky sharks they've been seeing off in the distance don't decide to come and visit.

I knew the premise before I started to watch the film, and I was interested to see how two people and a few sharks in the middle of the ocean could carry a whole movie on their own. Unfortunately, it turned out that there was a good thirty minutes (out of the film's eighty-minute length) before they're stranded; thirty minutes during which nothing much really happens (well, except for some of the most blatantly gratuitous and unnecessary nudity I've seen in a movie... not that I'm complaining, mind you). The worst part is that once they're actually stranded and the film is supposed to 'get scary', well, not much happens. It turns out that two people and a few sharks in the middle of the ocean just isn't enough to carry a film.

Anyway, to be honest there were one or two decent scenes involving the sharks and a moderate amount of suspense. But all in all, Open Water was pretty shallow.