Obviously, open spoilers below. The quick and dirty spoiler-free review: don’t waste your time.
Okay, so the movie Open Water is a few years old - I recall it playing in theaters and I was somewhat interested in the idea but didn’t go see it then. So Discovery Channel is running shark week, and my cable On Demand put up some shark movies, with this one being one. Since I had some time and I saw it and it was only $3, I figured I would check it out.
The premise: two people SCUBA diving get abandoned in open water (i.e. ocean) and spend the night in shark infested waters. Okay, scary and all that, one of those “harrowing tales of survival” like on that TV show “I Shouldn’t Be Alive”. Right?
First thing that jumps out is the movie production quality. The image quality is something like a local PBS station. It’s not even widescreen, but old TV proportions. This is definitely not a major movie studio production. I was thinking, “What? Is this the right movie?” Okay.
The director has some strange ideas about framing the scene. There are lots of ultra closeups of set pieces and props, strange scenes of the city and/or surrounding wilderness. The acting is wooden, especially at the beginning. And for me to notice, it has to be dreadful. The pacing is slow and cumbersome.
But at least there’s an interesting true story in there, right?
Now time for the plot. It starts with the couple in America, getting ready for their vacation trip, talking on cell phones and loading up in the car. The acting in this part is dreadful. Daniel, the boyfriend/husband (I was never certain, they had different last names), even comments on her packing her laptop and if they will have internet connection. So they fly to wherever they went (I don’t think I caught where they went, maybe someplace in the Caribbean?). Theh it shows them in their hotel room the night before, discussing their home life and jobs, and suddenly there’s a gratuitous booby shot. Not sure what it’s doing in there, Susan is sitting on the bed reading with some stuff on her face (beauty product of some type), and she’s buck naked. Daniel comes over (wearing boxers), they turn out the lights, kiss, she comments he now has stuff on his face, then they decide not to have sex and go to sleep.
The next day they load up on the boat. Apparently this was a last minute trip for them, they worked out their plans in a hurry and got on this boat. As the boat drives out to sea, the dive captain goes over the rules, talks about the buddy system and how long they’ll be down. One guy takes a head count by looking around and counting heads himself while people are milling about and prepping and whatnot, and writes the number on the clipboard - 20.
This is a horribly sloppy protocol for taking a headcount. If you actually want to ensure you get everybody, you should, at a minimum, make everyone sit down and pay attention so you ensure you don’t miss anyone or get confused while people move about. More preferrable is to have them count off (1, 2, etc), so everyone actually participates in the count. The strictest protocol would be to itemize the list by name and have everyone physically check in. Their boat isn’t that big and with 20 people, that’s fairly crowded, and with people moving about, stowing their gear, checking their tanks, etc, that’s a busy deck with a lot of moving bodies and no room to really see everything.
Okay, as they get to the dive site, one guy apparently forgot his mask, and so he has to wait in the boat. As the people hit the water, Daniel and Susan wander off from the group to do their own thing. Daniel is pretty experienced and so it shouldn’t be a problem, they know how long the dive captain said they’d be down. Oh, someone in the boat asked about sharks, and the dive captain said “If you see a shark and don’t want to see sharks, close your eyes. The sharks around here are not very aggressive.”
So we see some undersea shots, some look at morays and fish and a small sand shark that Susan pets as it swims by. And then we see at the boat, a couple surface early, the lady is having trouble getting her ears to equalize and they climb out of the water. So jr boat boy puts tally marks on the clipboard for the people who came out of the water - 3 (one for the guy with no mask, then this couple). Next, the guy without the mask is eager to get dive time and asks to borrow the girl’s mask, and gets the guy to go into the water with him (since he is required to have a buddy), so he gets to have dive time after all. Great. Only tally-boy doesn’t bother to record that people went back into the water. Stupid, sloppy.
So the dive time starts winding down, all the people come back to the boat and load up, and tally-boy marks down a tallymark every time someone comes out of the water. So of course he gets 20, but Susan and Daniel, who are off doing their own thing, are still in the water. The boat loads up and leaves. Did I mention how stupid this is? Marking when people come out of the water? Not doing a second count off?
Daniel and Susan come back, and they’re confused because the boats gone and nobody is there. Susan is complaining that Daniel got them lost and kept them late, they look around. There are a few boats in the distance, but it’s a long way away, so they try to stay put and hope their boat comes back. Only they realize they’re drifting with the current. They try signaling boats but can’t get any attention- it’s too far, they’re too low in the water. So they stay together and float along.
Now we’re subjected to many interesting little events. They go through some jellyfish and get stung up a bit. There’s a joke about peeing and getting warmed up. They’re worried about sharks. A shark splashes up nearby, and bumps into them, but then leaves. We’re shown a clock counter to let us know how long it’s been.
Eventually they get upset, Daniel yells. They have an argument, make up. They accidentally fall asleep and get separated, but wake up close enough and find each other again. Susan’s leg is sore, Daniel checks it, she’s actually got some teeth marks on her leg. Apparently something checked her out while she was asleep.
Occassionally we are subjected to seeing sharks come near them, then leave. Meanwhile, we get interesting shots of the night life in the port, random people partying and carrying on, life going on as normal.
Eventually the day drags out, more sharks show up, one of them bites Daniel on the leg and he’s bleeding, Susan ties it with her dive belt. They’re clinging together, and we get nighttime. It’s dark, with a storm in the distance, so we’re subjected to pitch black screen with flashes of lightning to see. This part is pretty intense, so I’m glad it didn’t go on for long.
Finally, the next morning, someone goes back to the boat and notices their stuff still there, and starts raising the alarm. Boats and planes scramble to go looking for the lost couple.
Meanwhile, Daniel and Susan are still floating at sea. Daniel dies, and Susan kicks his body free, so the sharks take it. And she’s floating alone. And then she takes off her SCUBA tank, and then goes under water.
Epilogue: fishermen pull a shark and start cutting it open, and find their dive camera inside. Whee, sharks will eat anything.
Wait, they both died? Then how did we get this harrowing tale? What, the whole thing is fiction? GAH!!! I sat through all that, the horrid film quality, the bad cinematography, the wooden acting, the scary sharks, and all of it was just made up? WHAT a Rip Off!
So the part where they’re in the hotel and she has schmutz on her face and he gets it on his? Made up. The part where they’re in the water and pet the sand shark, and then later Daniel says “Earlier you were petting a shark, now you’re scared?” and Susan says, “Please, that was just an overgrown catfish”? Totally made up. The part where they get separated and then have to swim back together - fiction. It’s all what the writer decided would be a good story about how these two people might have spent their time before they died. All we know is they were abandoned at sea, disappeared, and are presumed dead and eaten by sharks. Maybe the parts on the boat have some basis in fact - there were people to interview about that, but everthing else is just a made up story.
DAMMIT, I feel lied to. I was expected a survival story. I was expecting someone telling the tale of what happened and how they made it through. I was not expecting the Perfect Storm ending, where everybody dies. :mad:
So, in summary, don’t waste your time, your money, your sanity on this piece of dreck. If you want a true story, this isn’t it, it’s only inspired by something that happened. If you want a good movie, this isn’t it. The director sucks and the budget was low and the production quality was amateur.
And if you’re looking for a good shark attack movie, this isn’t one of those, either. There’s relatively little actual shark attack. There are some “boo” surprise moments with the sharks, and some tense parts, but no Jaws moments.
So, take my advice, skip it.