Open water - En eaux profondes

Hyper-busy couple, Susan (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel (Daniel Kintner) finally take a break from their hectic lives to go on a scuba-diving holiday. At first, all is well. Then, their charter boat leaves without them, leaving the pair stranded in the middle of the ocean!

Small, bothersome marine life soon give way to schools of hungry sharks.

OPEN WATER, like the somewhat similar movie LONG WEEKEND, is about a bickering couple at the mercy of nature. The shark footage is very effective, while the vastness of the ocean adds a definite sense of desolation and probable doom.

This is a solid, low-budget thriller...

Open Water might be a bit too low budget for many audience members.

But this is a prime example of how budget should not hold back a brilliant concept.

This is as realistic as it comes, from the scene in the hotel room where the couple lounge around completely nude (like people do in real life!), to the anxiety and horror of being in the Open Water, alone.

This might very well be an underrated masterpiece that has spawned numerous awful sequels.

If this was a high budget A-film it would have sharks 10 meters long, the guy would wrestle one of them with a knife and the woman would show off huge boobs all the time. Instead there are no theatrically exaggerated shark attack scenes, but totally believable, down to earth dialogs and things we would expect to happen in this situation. The ending also unexpected and non-hollywoodical. Worth watching.

An excellent example of how a very high-quality survival film can be made for a low budget. The emphasis in the film is on the development of relationships in a couple thrown into the sea. Sharks appear in moments, which is not surprising for such a budget, but closer and closer each time. This is enough to understand the hopelessness of the situation. Shots with a couple in the water and parties on the shore alternate very successfully. Everyone is having fun and is not even aware of the tragedy unfolding at the same time. The actors play great, especially given the shooting conditions. An excellent film about how people find themselves helpless and defenseless on the open sea.

First of all congratulations to Chris Kentis for spotting this topic and writing and directing the film. Now you can tell after praising the film maker up front the rest of this review is going to be quite critical! This film unnerved me, it made me feel uncomfortable as well and that's the problem - it should have frightened the absolute living daylights out of me! Because I rate being deserted at sea in shark-infested waters right up there in the scary-stakes with being buried alive. Now I respect Mr Kentis and his collaborators decision to tell the story in a very minimalist way, I guess they considered this story was powerful enough on its own not to require a heavy hand, and I could have agreed with them pre production. But now having seen it I don't think it was. I'm not saying they needed full on John Williams score and masses of special effects but perhaps varying the camera angles a bit more would have worked better.

Most of the story is told with the camera in an elevated position looking down on the protagonists, i.e a boat! This means I am divorced from any threat or the action. Couldn't we have got down to eye level more allowing us to feel we were more apart of the story? It was our toes about be chomped off? I'm afraid in the drama stakes this movie never got anymore dramatic than the average TV docu-drama and that's a real shame for after coming up with this concept and creating a half decent script Mr Kentis has missed an opportunity to create a classic.