Open Water

I had to see OPEN WATER after seeing SILENT HOUSE. The same directors for both films, I loved SILENT HOUSE, although I felt as if I viewed it as what it had turned out to be rather than what it had been intended to be. There are a lot of failures in that film, but I feel as if they actually strengthen the film. With OPEN WATER though, I see only weaknesses. The film is one of those 'now what if THIS happened' kind of films in which some really obviously ridiculous event happens, and we're manipulated into believing that it could have happened. In this case, a couple on a scuba diving expedition go out with around 18 other passengers to the middle of the ocean. Due to a botched head count, the two are left behind, and everyone returning on the small boat inexplicably forget about them. Did the couple not have a single interaction on the way over or are we supposed to erroneously and unfoundedly believe that people are that inattentive? Nevertheless, the couple are lost in the open water. The current moves them in the direction they don't want to be going, they have no food, and the woman, Susan, decides that drinking ocean water couldn't be all that bad. But the problem with OPEN WATER is that the filmmakers have decided that shoddiness is equivalent to rawness, and their bilious camera-style on the open water waves following the bobbing heads of the Susan and Daniel. There's some talk about what to do, but I feel as if the filmmakers put too much credence in their subject. One of the major conceits of the film is that these are just two regular people, doomed at sea, but what is "regular"? I found these characters so "regular" that it was irregular, and there was no specificity to their lives. They just become symbols for the weak horror device of 'it could be you!" And then the film ends and I've been bored. Watching two people bob around in the water [SPOILER] and then die is pretty boring.

★★ out of Five