Open Water (film)

Plot

Daniel Kintner (Daniel Travis) and Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) are a couple frustrated that their hard-working lives do not allow them to spend much time together. They decide to head out on a scuba-diving vacation to help improve their relationship. On their second day, they join a group scuba dive. A head count is taken, and the passenger total is recorded as 20. Daniel and Susan decide to separate briefly from the group while underwater. Half an hour later, the group returns to the boat. Two members of the group are inadvertently counted twice, so the dive master thinks everyone is back on board, and the boat leaves the site. However, Daniel and Susan are still underwater, unaware that the others have returned. When they resurface, the boat has gone. They believe the group will soon return to recover them.

Stranded at sea, it slowly dawns on Daniel and Susan that their boat is not coming back for them. They bicker, battle bouts of hunger and mental exhaustion, and realize that they have probably drifted far from the dive site. They also realize that sharks have been circling them below the surface. Soon, jellyfish appear, stinging them both, while sharks come in close. Susan receives a small shark bite on the leg, but does not immediately realize it. Daniel goes under and discovers a small fish feeding on the exposed flesh of her bite wound. He does not tell Susan. Later, a shark bites Daniel and the wound begins to bleed profusely. Susan removes her weight belt and uses it to apply pressure to Daniel's wound. He appears to go into shock. The tight-fitting neoprene wet suits are apparently keeping them from fully realizing they have been sustaining small bites. After night falls, sharks return and attack Daniel during a storm, killing him. The next morning, Daniel and Susan's belongings are finally noticed on the boat by a crew member. He remembers the couple and realizes they must have been left at the dive site. A search for the couple begins.

Susan realizes Daniel is dead and releases him into the water, where sharks attack and pull him down in a feeding frenzy. After putting on her mask, she looks beneath the surface and sees several large sharks now circling her. Susan looks around one last time for any sign of coming rescue. Seeing none, she removes her scuba gear and goes underwater to drown before the sharks can attack. Elsewhere, a fishing crew cut open a newly-caught shark's stomach, finding a diving camera, apparently that of Daniel and Susan. One of the fishermen asks offhandedly to another, "Wonder if it works?"

Cast

Production

The filmmakers used live sharks, as opposed to the mechanical ones used in Jaws decades ago or the computer-generated fish in Deep Blue Sea. The film strives for authentic shark behavior, shunning the stereotypical exaggerated shark behavior typical of many films. The movie was shot on digital video. As noted above, the real-life events that inspired this story took place in the southern Pacific Ocean, and this film moves the location to the Atlantic Ocean, being filmed in the Bahamas, the United States Virgin Islands, the Grenadines, and Mexico.

Box office

Open Water was made for a budget recorded by Box Office Mojo as $120,000, grossed $1 million in 47 theaters on its opening weekend and made a lifetime gross of $55 million.

Critical reception

Most critics praised the film for intensity and expertly minimalist filmmaking, while it was not well received by the audience. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert praised the film highly: "Rarely, but sometimes, a movie can have an actual physical effect on you. It gets under your defenses and sidesteps the 'it's only a movie' reflex and creates a visceral feeling that might as well be real". In a much less favorable review, A. O. Scott in The New York Times lamented that it "succeeds in mobilizing the audience's dread, but it fails to make us care as much as we should about the fate of its heroes".

The film has a 72% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 191 reviews with an average rating of 6.6/10.

Sequels