The film waits until the end to make a splash, but that can't make up for the shortcomings moviegoers endure in the meantime.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published August 19, 2004
[Lions Gate Films]
Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis are a married couple who find themselves in the soup on a scuba diving trip in Open Water.
The final, poetically depressing shot of Open Water almost makes everything preceding it worthwhile. Almost, but not quite.
What makes the film's shortcomings more frustrating is that the movie (minus opening and end credits) is barely longer than an hour. That isn't enough time to do anything really wrong, but writer-director Chris Kentis doesn't do much right, either.
That is, he doesn't until the final 15 minutes or so, after all the circumstances fall into place, leaving an upwardly mobile couple, Susan (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel (Daniel Travis) floating without hope or a boat in shark-infested waters. By that time, viewers may be pulling for the sharks.
Kentis is going for a Blair Witch Project effect here: a fairly common crisis steeped in primal fear, no-frills filmmaking and painfully vicarious suspense. Yet Open Water doesn't share that film's ingenuity or originality. There's no brilliant conceit about why a camera is capturing events that, logically, nobody else would witness. It's easy to remind ourselves that this is only a movie, which is the worst mistake any experiment in terror can make.
We meet Susan and Daniel as they're leaving for a tropical vacation. Both are workaholics who could use a break. An unspoken tension between them is suggested when she declines his sexual advances. They go shopping and dining and arrange to join a scuba diving trip on a boat that will desert them.
Simple stuff, so what does Kentis do with it? First, the reasons why the couple's absence isn't noticed must be explained, and it isn't easy. Immediately, questions arise: Don't dive guides take head counts? Don't they notice two empty deck slots for air tanks? Doesn't any male notice that one of the few attractive women aboard isn't on the return trip?
Meanwhile, Susan and Daniel float, keeping an eye on the horizon for boats that invariably are too far away. They bicker, blame and eventually panic as hours pass and sea creatures - a man-of-war, a barracuda and those sharks - get more curious. Sea sickness gives way to dehydration. The situation doesn't get thrilling until nightfall, when Kentis capitalizes on our fears of the dark to make us squirm. And, since this isn't The Blair Witch Project, our attention is diverted to events that may lead to a rescue.
Open Water is a good idea for an even shorter film than Kentis fashioned. His restraint in showing the sharks is a nod to Steven Spielberg's teasing in Jaws, but that film had interesting characters and subplots to tide us over. I like the way Kentis ends his movie, but I'm not sure if that is due to the cinematic style or the dramatic result. Any film that can't lead viewers to one conclusion or the other is dead in the water.
Open Water
Grade: C
Director: Chris Kentis
Cast: Blanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis, Saul Stein, Estelle Lau, Michael E. Williamson
