Reviewed - Open Water: Congratulations are due to director Chris Kentis who, with a budget of only $120,000 and using just his wife, Laura Lau, as crew, has managed to turn Open Water into a modest hit at the US box office. It seems rather mean-spirited to point out that his stripped-down tale of two divers abandoned at sea is a little too one-note and monotonous to justify the hype that has surrounded it.
What we have here is an impressive attempt to do the impossible - make floating interesting - which, even when it fails, fails in noteworthy ways. (Considering the smallness of the budget, it is probably unnecessary to point out that the film is shot on grainy digital video and looks rather nasty, but we mention it anyway to guard against disappointment.)
The unknown (and, though it pains me to say it, likely to remain so) Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis play a squabbling married couple on a scuba-diving holiday in the Caribbean. Bobbing back to the surface during their first trip out to open water, they are shocked to find that the boat that delivered them there is nowhere to be seen. It transpires that they were the victims of a simple clerical error - another two tourists went in the water unnoticed by the supervisor - and the notion that such catastrophic damage can result from such a petty oversight is one of the most frightening things in the film.
So what is the rest of Open Water taken up with? Well, some more bickering, a great deal of treading water (both metaphorical and literal) and not inconsiderable amounts of weather: a storm at night is quite brilliantly realised. Oh, and aquatic fauna, of course. Much has been made of the fact that Kentis and Lau dumped their cast among living, breathing sharks and the presence of the toothy beasts, often just glimpsed as ominous shadows, certainly adds to the atmosphere of desperation.
The distributors have, however, unhelpfully oversold the significance of the shark attacks. At its best, Open Water thrives on simmering menace rather than explosive violence, and anybody expecting something in the line of Jaws will come away disenchanted.
Based very loosely on actual events, the film is, in fact, made to no known templates. Certainly few Hollywood film-makers would think to deliver a picture in which so little happens in such unchanging scenery. Then again, most of those directors would balk at ending a film in such a brave and unexpected fashion. I'll say no more.
