Open Water | Review

Tension-filled indie flick carries chilling afterthoughts.

No budget? No Problem. Ask director Chris Kentis how to get a small film off the ground from simple Sundance entry into nation wide distribution and the potential answer for this film’s success will be due to film history. Referencing the first summer blockbuster in history with 1975’s Jaws and the most profitable return on one man’s investment with The Blair Witch Project, this unknown presence that we usually see in the woods and not the water supplies more terror and tension-filled moments than most packaged films that count on red syrup substances and a psycho bogeymen to strike fear into the minds of its moviegoers.

Carrying the “based on a true story” label, this scuba diving-excursion-gone-wrong stacks up the odds against its yuppie couple of Daniel and Susan (played by unknowns Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan). Before jumping into their wetsuits, Open Water leads us from the safety of the dry land and then onto a half day’s worth of excitement in the world’s giant swimming pool. Along the way, Kentis drops a couple of visual cues that serve as a checklist of things not to do or to avoid before gearing up for some Jacques Cousteau activity. When compounded together, such a thing as a simple headcount or the placement of a bag under a chair proves to be the fateful errors that made this scuba-diving experience into a surprisingly not all that uncommon nightmare. While their characters are poorly developed – Kentis manages to do more than just elaborate on how they might become tasty brochettes for the ocean’s jagged teeth creatures, he puts his characters through the kind of survivalist test that was featured in this year’s Touching the Void.

What makes Kentis’ film so alluring is neither the shaky digital camerawork nor the use of real sharks (?!) but instead it is the constant presence of the unknown and the fear of knowing as a tension-building device. Combined with the element of time as a life-threatening factor, the text sees the psychological trauma and physical toll tax the pair – one sequence sees the two having an argument in the middle of a shark infested ocean while another scene sees the couple desperately trying to get back together after having drifted apart. As the lighting advances the narrative from a.m. to p.m. and as the minor catastrophes mount one by one so does the tension level. A passing ship, a slight nudge under the water and a lighting storm act as constant bone-chilling devices that make the film at times almost too much to bare. This is an uncomfortable film, — besides a slight remark that skiing would have made a better vacation getaway there is no pleasure in watching this film but that doesn’t make it less of an experience. By film’s end you’ll either want to roll yourself up into a ball or check your pulse for a potential heart condition.

The low-grade quality of the picture and the prolonged one-act circumstances will probably make some unassuming viewer’s wonder where their money went – but the constant wondering if the two will make it in the end is enough to reconsider your next visit in the water and your next visit at the theatre. In case you are wondering — this is the 60 best minutes of suspense in film this year. Not bad for a film that cost the price of three BMW’s to make.

Rating 3.5 stars