Open Water is a 2004 thriller directed by Chris Kentis and starring Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis.
I love studio marketing strategies. Occasionally they hit the mark, but more often than not they make hilariously little sense. Open Water was marketed as “The Blair Witch Project meets Jaws”, I assume because it’s filmed on a digital handycam and there’s sharks in it. But it’s there that the similarities end.
Open Water is in fact a pretty effective thriller. I guess the other thing it has in common with Jaws and Blair Witch is that it was made on a very tight budget, and like Jaws, employs the ‘less is more’ approach to building tension. The ‘enemies’ of the piece, the sharks, are glimpsed only briefly as they surface near the stranded couple or brush past their legs. These jump scares are very effective. I particularly liked the moments when Chris and Susan put their scuba masks on and peer below the water. At first, it seems like only one small shark is lurking down there, but each time they peer beneath the waves there are more sharks gathering below.
This film plays into a fear of mine – being stranded in the middle of the ocean (especially the scenes at night). I’m not a strong swimmer, so I wouldn’t last long having to tread water for hours on end.
The lighting during the scene at night is brilliant. It’s pitch darkness punctuated only by flashes of lightning. It amps up the tension perfectly – they can’t see, so neither can we.
I also really like the efforts the film makes to make a statement on human nature – the couple, growing desperate and exhausted, begin to uselessly blame each other for their predicament. I couldn’t help but laugh at the moment where Susan yells “I wanted to go skiing!”
It occasionally goes a little deeper into their relationship, which I also liked. There’s a great moment where Chris, in sheer frustration begins to scream at the ocean around him. I love Susan’s reaction to it – she looks both understanding and annoyed. You know she feels the same way, she is just handling it differently.
I always love films that show the cruel irony of nature – Chris and Susan are dehydrated but surrounded by water they can’t drink. And the film is terrifying because it’s so real. There’s no big Great White menace circling slowly out in the darkness. There are just scores of smaller sharks (I don’t know about you, but if I was stranded on the ocean miles from rescue and running out of hope, any species of shark with its eye on me would have me shitting myself). I love that the sharks bide their time – they simply swarm beneath the couple, waiting. They know they are the top of the food chain in this particular situation.
Unfortunately the film has some stuff working against it. For one thing, the soundtrack is really odd. During a couple of scenes that are supposed to be quite tense and desperate, the film makers use this Polynesian choir that is almost upbeat. It’s so out of place it’s almost comical.
And I don’t like the way the film cuts back to goings on back in Hawaii. At times it’s just random shots of lizards on rocks or palm trees swaying in the breeze, but we also get scenes back at the boat, where the diving guide discovers Chris and Susan’s belongings and realises they are missing. I can only assume the film makers did this to trick us into thinking that maybe the couple will be rescued, but I found these scenes unnecessary primarily because they break the tension. The film would have been far more effective if we the audience were trapped with the stranded couple.
Anyway, after one of the final cuts back to the couple we see that Chris has died due to blood loss from a small bite from one of the sharks. It’s a really nice moment from Susan as she begins to cry and pushes him away. I then love the final reveal – Susan once again puts on her scuba mask and looks into the water, and we see scores of sharks circling right below her. I love that she simply resigns herself to her fate, and slowly removes her scuba gear and sinks beneath the water. It’s a chilling moment that is again somewhat ruined by that stupid choir music. It’s like the film makers weren’t confident enough to simply let the scene play out in silence.
And the epilogue is really bizarre. We see a freshly caught shark being carved up with a knife – it’s fins are cut off and it’s then gutted. It’s supposed to again be some kind of statement about nature, but it comes across more like “Hey you murdering little bastards, you may have won this round...but I feel a hankering for shark fin soup tonight! Mwahahahahaha!”
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