The Watermen

Three guys and three girls charter a fishing cruise. The boat breaks down and they are distressed as they drift helplessly in the ocean. They are finally rescued by a passing fishing trawler which gives them water. They eagerly drink up and pass out from the tampered bottles. It's a brutal ocean cruise of horrors as the cannibal fishermen gleefully torture the young people.

This is simple torture porn. It's not that imaginative. The guys are too douchey. The girls are all T&A. The girls do end up with individual characters after escaping their bonds. This movie does certain things well but nothing great. The fishermen need to be more specific. I could never be certain how many they are exactly. There are some gruesome kills. This is only for fans of this type of torture porn horror who don't expect much.

This thriller starts in medias res, as a girl is being hunter at night in the swamp by a couple of hulking goons in fishermen's attire. After she meets her fate, we are introduced to six fine pieces of trash Americana leisuring in a posh villa. The 3 girls look right out of a bikini-happy euro-dance music video and the 3 guys, who use "Dude" at the beginning of each sentence, probably hit the gym 3 times a day. This fine group of clueless bourgeoisie get ready for a fishing trip (duh ?) in the middle of the sea.

Before they embark, they stop by some kind of store run by an old fisherman that sells them "special" bait. Turns out the bait if made of human flesh, as the 6 airheads will soon discover.

To its credit, this movie is slickly directed and photographed. Nocturnal swamp scenes could have easily turned into one giant black screen with dialogue in any other B-movie, but the director of photography knew what he was doing. It all looks quite professional.

It's all the more sorry that there's not a single novel idea in the movie that could save it from instant disposability. Clichés abound, and quite cringe-worthy ones, I'll tell you : one of the girls, who didn't know what she was getting into, is actually the lead's former girlfriend, of course they fall in love again, everybody gets drunk before the drama begins, the first ones to die are the hottest and dumbest but they still show their tits, the villains talk some kind of Russian, the main goon comes back from the dead so often that you feel like you're watching another "Friday the 13th" installment, the male lead drops his shirt for completely out-of-place action sequences, there's a baton-of-fire fight that looks more like capoeira than a real fight for survival, and I forget some.

This movie's been done before a hundred times (and the director must have seen all hundred) spanning the whole gamut of Hollywood genres : survival, action, romance, stoner comedy... Still, it's done professionally, and past the 1st 40 minutes, it moves fast enough that an undemanding audience will have its fun, as did I. And it doesn't hurt that the whole cast (male & female) is goddamn gorgeous and not shy of dropping their tops.

We got a signed copy of the movie from a local convention. I had heard about the behaviors and opinions of the people who live out in Guinea, and I was intrigued that they turned them into these psychopathic freaks. We definitely wanted to support local film makers and that's the extent of my interest in this film. I expected the campiness, bad acting, low budget, confusing plots, and excessive gore. The rape and torture was a little much for my taste. But if you like the wrong turns, the hills have eyes, and Texas chainsaw type movies, it will hit the spot but you have to be able to work past all the amateur aspects of it. It's pretty gorey. Like hostile. Like the saws. It's very disturbing. I won't watch it again. I just wanted to support the local film makers.

If you're going to make a low budget slasher (as this is supposed to be) then it has to have an adequate amount of nudity and gore and this had neither. The nudity was nothing more than a few brief topless scenes and the gore was very mild. There is no point complaining about the acting as you don't expect much from a low budget 'horror' but this also was very wooden from beginning to end.

I can't think of a single redeeming feature that would make the movie worthwhile watching. All they really had to do was to make the violence more extreme, shorten the filler scenes by half and possibly throw in some good titillation and it could have been watched on fast forward.

Avoid the movie unless you're very easily shocked or have been watching grass grow for the past ten years.

I was misguided by the fake reviews in IMDb: see that all the good reviews belong to persons with only one review promoting this garbage.

The plot is ridiculous, absurd, unrealistic and absolutely unbelievable. A crew of watermen abducts persons in boats to grind their flesh and make bait for fishes and crabs. Six youngsters have their motor yacht sabotaged and they are stranded in the sea. The crew of a trawler rescues them and they drink spiked water and faint. When they wake up, they learn that they are trapped in an island and they have to fight against the sadistic men to survive.

A yacht that does not have batteries to support GPS and other safety systems; a guy that sabotages the boat, steals the supplies, water and flares in a couple of minutes; the watermen are practically indestructible; Mike insists in returning many times, inclusive when he is escaping in a small boat and Bret is wounded and he wants to return to seek medical supply. A question: what happened with the boat and Captain Ray? In the end, what else could I expect from a movie where Jason Mewes is the lead actor? My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Maré de Sangue" ("Tide of Blood")