OPEN WATER

Starring:
Blanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis, Saul Stein and Estelle Lau

Writer/Director:
Chris Kentis

Running Time:
80 mins

Out to buy on DVD 27/12/04

"Where's the boat?"

After finally getting away from their hectic work schedules, Susan (Ryan) and Daniel (Travis) plan to enjoy their tropical vacation. When the couple sign up for a cheap but cheerful scuba excursion to a popular reef, they surface from their dive to find that the boat has left without them. Fifteen miles from shore, alone and with no way of contacting anyone, Susan and Daniel's have to hope that the boat realises their error or someone spots them. As the drift in the currents, a storm begins to build and the sharks start to circle.

Filmed on a micro-budget with digital cameras in shark-invested waters, can writer/director Chris Kentis instil a primal fear that will make everyone cower in fright? Yes and No.

Anyone who is inspired to make a movie with a shoe-sting budget but an awful lot of passion deserves praise and Open Water is very praiseworthy. For two thirds of the movie Kentis succeeds in creating a pair of characters that you start to care about. He takes his time introducing them, their relationship and the problems in their everyday lives before they set out to sea. Then for the first half hour he creates real tension as the realisation of the situation sets in and the first shark appears. After this the momentum drops dramatically however.

Taking into account the limitations of finance, you can give the movie the benefit of the doubt when it comes to creating many action or set sequences but the constant threat of the surrounding sharks soon starts to become abit weary and the storm sequence doesn't really have the impact it could have had.

It is the ending that really lets the movie down however. The emphasis of that this is based on true events is shattered an ending that fails to live up to expectations and feels like a really big let down. After nearly seventy minutes of quite terrifying realism, the finale leaves you feeling extremely disappointed.

The performances are very good however. Little known actors Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis make a big splash with two breakout roles that are bound to get them noticed. Both of them create two characters that are very natural and in turn very realistic. The two react as you'd expect average ordinary people to react to this extreme situation. There are no superhuman efforts to save the day, no unnecessary sacrifices and no elongated speeches that it would take five writers to come up with. These are normal people reacting to a life-threatening situation. Of the two, Blanchard Ryan probably shows the most potential as she makes the career driven Susan the most believeable of the pair.

As a piece of creative cinema, Open Water deserves applause for the sheer inventiveness and devotion by everyone involved. However good the film is in its early stages, you still have a very hard time forgiving the ending. While some my find it shocking or even inventive, it does degrade the realism of the whole of movie.

Audio commentary from the actors and filmmakers
Deleted scenes
'In The Jaws Of Death': a behind-the-scenes documentary featuring actors Blanchard Ryan & Daniel Travis and film makers Laura Lau and Chris Kentis (30 mins)
'On The High Seas' featurette
Diving safety facts

Jaws


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