Open Water

If you're in the mood for a crashingly dull, rather uneventful, and pointless movie, this one's for you.

* SPOILER WARNING *


The 'story' follows a couple, named Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan), who have gone scuba diving during their vacation on some Carribean island or another. Due to a screw-up with the head count by a fellow I will henceforth call Incompetent Island Guy, the boat leaves them behind while they're diving. For the rest of the movie, we watch them bob around in the ocean, blame each other for their predicament, bitch, and be generally pretty understandibly unhappy.

Highlights:

• Daniel gets stung by a jellyfish.
• Susan freaks out a bit because a fish was nibbling at her.
• Daniel gets bitten by a little shark and Susan stops the bleeding by wrapping a belt over the wound.

After a night of being pestered by sharks, the morning finds Daniel dead and being held onto by Susan after the former presumably bled to death during the course of the night. Realizing that she is clinging to what amounts to a 160 pound Beggin' Strip, she pushes the corpse away and it is promptly eaten. But no gore here - the corpse jerks a bit in the water so you realize it's being eaten by sharks.

Meanwhile, Incompetent Island Guy finds their gear aboard the boat and realizes his horrible error. A sea-plane, helicopters, and a virtual flotilla of boats race to find the pair.

The camera goes back to Susan, who then takes off her gear, voluntarily plunges beneath the surface and dies.

The End.

If you're looking for gore, there is none. If you're waiting to catch a glipse of some Mother of All Sharks, there are none - they're all pretty small for a movie. If you are looking for an engaging story, you are going to be horribly disappointed. Lion's Gate Films should be made to refund the ticket price of every poor sap that watched this pathetic excuse for a movie. It is apparently 'based on a true story', but considering that both of the main characters died before they were found you would think they could have took a bit more artistic licence or at least allowed you to connect with the characters somewhat. They seemed to be little more than a pair of over-achieving and extremely annoying yuppies, so the feeling of loss isn't particularly great when they wind up guests of Davey Jones.