Mar Aberto

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.

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.

This movie was never about character development. This movie is

never about a couple having a fight. This movie is not about

sharks. This movie was never meant to be filmed in a pro way.

This movie is about how your will and your life falls to pieces when

facing something that could be a nightmare and you feel you're

totally awake. This movie is about desperation, about your life

being taken from you with hours to feel how you will not be the

same, because you know it's over for you, but you don't want to

believe it... something we like to call hope.

You may have entered Open Water willing to eat all your popcorn

and coming out of the theater telling jokes and feeling life is here

forever. But this movie is about the opposite.

This is a wonderful film, and I thought Susan was going to be

bit**ing all the time and stuff, but she didn't. The ending was so

damn sad. I left the theater in a quiet fashion. I couldn't say a word

to my girlfriend because I knew she felt for them too.

You don't need character development when you turn on the news

and see millions of unknowns blown to pieces or starving. You

don't need it because you know they are like you. Made of the

same matter, and as fragile as any other animal.

Open Water is a beautiful piece of movie-making, and it's so

human that it's almost unreal.

Uses a minimalist budget, a vast outdoor setting, a very small cast, and a narrative that meticulously builds a pervasive sense of dread without giving too much away