Based on a true story, Open Water deals with a yuppie couple
named Susan and Daniel, who try to get away from their stress-filled lives on a
much-needed vacation at an island resort in the Caribbean. After a day exploring
the sights on the island, they join a charter dive group that's leaving for the
open ocean the next morning. The boat is packed with 20 recreational divers
overall. Everything is hunky dory at first, with the crew keeping efficient tabs
on everybody who goes in and then comes out of the water. However, when one of
the divers is unable to dive because he forgot his diving mask, he asks one of
the divers who came out of the water if he could borrow hers. When the odd man out
goes in the water with another partner, this causes the dive master to flub the
head count, and the boat leaves while Susan and Daniel are still underwater.
When they surface, Susan and Daniel find themselves alone in the middle of the
ocean, bobbing up and down in the waves like a pair of corkscrews. When they see
the first shark fin break the surface of the water, they try not to splash
around--Daniel is an avid viewer of the Discovery Channel's Shark Week, and is
an expert of sorts of what not to do when confronted with these predators of the
deep. However, their best-laid plans go awry when Susan and Daniel are stung by
jellyfish, which cause them to swim away, thus making more splashing in the
water. They both try to stay calm and wait for the rescue that they know will
come, yet even more sharks gather around them, and they are becoming more and
more aggressive as night begins to fall over the vast, empty ocean.
Open Water builds up the suspense very slowly, taking time to get to know the
characters before depositing them in danger. And even when they are abandoned in
the ocean, there is still a slow, steady build up of terror as they begin to
realize that this situation is getting worse by the moment. Blanchard Ryan and
Daniel Travis are superb in their roles as Susan and Daniel. Their
fine performances make you care for this couple, which elevates this film above
the dozens of hack jobs that pass for thrillers these days. An amazing fact
about this low budget film is that the actors actually interacted with real
sharks. There were no special effects whatsoever; Ryan and Travis were really
in the water with sharks.
The DVD features an audio commentary, a featurette called "The Indie Essentials:
Gearing Up For A Marketable Movie", where the filmmakers and Lions Gate Films
studio executives discuss what makes a good independent film. "Calm Before The
Storm" is a making of documentary that reveals just how low budget the movie
really was (they had no real film crew, and they didn't even have any film; the
movie was shot directly on video). There's also bonus on-location footage that
offers more behind the scenes views of the making of the film, deleted scenes,
and two different audio commentaries, the first with the actors Ryan and Travis,
and the second with husband and wife filmmaking team of director Chris Kentis
and producer Laura Lau. --SF