Open Water

"Where's the boat?"

A few weeks ago, Mothra talked about some summer double features and it just seemed criminal to not have a review of Open Water afterwards. So what better way to celebrate my birthday than to remind myself why swimming in the ocean is so terrifying?

Yeah, this movie is nightmare fuel. Or at least the premise of the movie is. One of my greatest fears is falling off the side of a cruise ship, and this is really just an extension of that.

While on vacation, Susan and Daniel decide to go scuba diving as part of a group excursion, only to get accidentally left behind and stranded in the middle of the ocean. The bulk of the movie is just them, floating, waiting to see if rescue will ever arrive.

The very idea of it is terrifying, and it doesn't exactly make for an enjoyable movie to watch. This isn't fun. I didn't have any fun. But it made me nauseous. It made me anxious. It just isn't a movie that I'll put on because I have some time to kill. In fact, I'll probably never rewatch it again.

It's worth a watch, though. It's only 79 minutes long, which is exactly the length that it needed to be. There's not another ten minutes of plot here, nevermind anything that would push it closer to two hours. Like I said, Susan and Daniel are mostly just floating.

Occasionally, animals will swim by. Sharks will take a small nibble to see what they are. Susan and Daniel will yell at each other. But that's it. There isn't really a story as much as there's a situation.

A story, traditionally and at its most basic, has characters acting and reacting to events and their actions, reactions, and/or lack thereof lead to the next event. There's momentum, an energy to it, even if it's slow and casual.

A situation doesn't have that energy. It's one event, and even if multiple things happen during that event, it's still a self-contained capsule. A situation can be great for character studies or capturing a specific aesthetic, but they run the risk of being boring.

Open Water at times rides that edge. I was initially very on edge and tense. The fact that Susan and Daniel were often surrounded by boats was almost horrifically cruel. They could see salvation, but realistically those boats were miles and miles away. They would never be able to reach them.

By the last twenty minutes, I was bored. There's only so much bobbing up and down in the water that I could deal with, even if the movie was always well shot and excellent at emphasizing just how alone they were.

The final scene then grabbed me by the ankles and dragged me down to the bottom of the ocean. It was the quietness of it that really got to me. The finality. That and the way the sun illuminated the water just created this haunting visage that I won't soon forget.

But enough about the movie itself. What about the sharks?

When I first started reviewing shark movies, I laid out the three options when it comes to actually depicting sharks on screen: mechanical/animatronic, CGI of varying quality, and semi-random stock footage. I was unaware of a fourth option.

Film with actual sharks.

Yeah, those are actual, genuine Caribbean reef sharks that are actually, genuinely in the water with the actors. There are no digital or special effects. The sharks are right there. Apparently, they had a professional "shark wrangler" named Stuart Cove to supervise and oversee it all, and the actors both wore chainmail underneath their diving suits.

Obviously, when you're working with real animals it's going to feel... well, more real. Even the best animatronic or CGI shark can't match the way that they move and bend in the water. It really plays into the movie's favor, especially since the sharks aren't expected to act unnaturally.

The sharks aren't exaggerated monsters. They're just normal animals displaying typical shark behavior. They leave normal, shark sized bites with actual teeth marks that produce a realistic amount of blood. They're not even really the primary antagonists. They're not the biggest threat. Whether they were there or not, Susan and Daniel were going to die. It was inevitable.

And since the actors are actually in the middle of the ocean, it lends an almost documentary feel to it all. It was shot by two people on home camcorders for under $500,000. (I've seen both that total and $130,000 for the budget. Either way, it's a tiny amount of money.) There's no frills here.

Only Susan and Daniel and the water and the slow realization that there won't be anything else.

Random Thoughts

I actually snorkeled with Caribbean reef sharks last summer. It was one of the most terrifying and yet beautiful experiences of my life, and I wish that I had thought to bring an underwater camera. They were mesmerizing.

There are two sequels: Open Water 2: Adrift and Open Water 3: Cage Dive. None of them are connected to each other in any way, shape, or form. I've actually watched Open Water 2 before, solely because Richard Speight Jr was in the cast. It was fine, with no sharks that I can remember. I've never seen the third movie, but apparently it actually has sharks... fake ones, at least.

There is some very out of place nudity in the beginning of the movie. To quote Dr. Mel King, you'll see hair. It's weird and I don't really know why it's there, but something to be aware of depending on who you watch this with.

I need to take a moment to mention that Open Water is based on a true story, and unlike most horror movies that claim that, it's not just a marketing ploy. Tom and Eileen Lonergan were an American couple who went on a group scuba diving excursion off the coast of Australia in 1998. They were accidentally left behind, something that the dive boat only realized when they discovered their belongings still on board two days later. They were never found.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally watches far too many shark movies.

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