Open Water (2003)

OPEN WATER

A film review by David N. Butterworth

Copyright 2004 David N. Butterworth

*1/2 (out of ****)

Accidents will happen, and if a mistake is shocking enough it might eventually

find its way into a screenplay. It's hard to believe that a chartered dive

boat would inadvertently abandon two of its charges in shark-infested waters--"next

time count heads, not hash marks!" an astute fellow reviewer recently remarked--but

I'm willing to accept this frightening reality in the spirit of "Open Water"'s

"based on true events" proclamation.

What I am *not* willing to accept, however, is this shoddy excuse for filmmaking,

the kind of poorly made movie that gives "low budget indie" a bad name. "Open

Water" isn't low budget, it's no budget, shot on a Fisher Price kiddiecam with

accompanying two-year-old (presumably) behind the lens. The brainchild of husband-and-wife

team Chris Kentis and Laura Lau (producer), "Open Water" taps into the same

kind of primal fears as "The Blair Witch Project": what's supposedly scary about

it (other than its undistinguished cinematography) is anticipating what doesn't

happen, which amounts to watching two heads bobbing about the ocean for an interminably

long (or mercifully short, depending on your tolerance for water-logged histrionics)

79 minutes.

     "Oh God! Something's rubbing against my foot!"

Of that scant sub-90 minute running time, "Open Water" spends almost one

quarter setting things up, in which a stressed-out yuppie couple embarks on

a tropical vacation/scuba diving expedition. These scenes are dull, poorly

filmed, and amateurish in their construction, like outtakes from a boorish in-law's

digital videoed trip to St. Barts. Kentis has Susan (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel

(Daniel Travis) grapple with issues of workaholism in these early sequences

in order for viewers to relate to our laptop- and cell phone-dependent protagonists,

since there's absolutely no chance of that once they're quite literally up to

their necks in danger.

As for the gratuitous nudity you might have heard talk about there's a

couple of brief shots of Ryan's character reading naked in bed (where, I understand,

a lot of people shed their clothes). Get a grip and move on, guys.

Once at sea, writer/director/editor/cinematographer Kentis opts for some

"artistic" water shots and inappropriate use of music (original and source)

to give his film the depth he feels it needs, since Susan and Daniel have now

been reduced to a pair of bickering flotation devices--"if it weren't for your

job, we wouldn't have thrown our plans out the window... we would be where we

were supposed to be in the first place, and paying less than we are now to be

shark bait!" When your film is so dependent on acting, make sure your leads

can out perform "The Little Mermaid"'s Flotsam and Jetsam.

For some reason the film caused a feeding frenzy at Sundance this year,

with money-grubbing distributors quick to take the bait. Unfortunately the

genuine sense of dread the film ultimately conveys has almost everything to

do with its subject matter alone and nothing to do with the competency of the

people who made it. A director like Polanski or Phillip Noyce ("Dead Calm")

or Sam Raimi (or pretty much anyone with a little care and attention) might

have made a masterpiece from this material, not a shallow and frustrating exercise

in treading water.

--

David N. Butterworth

dnb@dca.net

Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf"

online at http://members.dca.net/dnb

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X-RT-TitleID: 1134547
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X-RT-RatingText: 1.5/4