Open Water Review
By Joe Lozito
"Open" Teasin'
Hyped, quite correctly, as "The Blair Witch Project" meets "Jaws", "Open Water" exists on that fringe of believability required to sustain any horror premise - a vacationing couple on a scuba trip are left behind in shark-infested waters. In the middle of their predicament, the husband, Daniel Kitner (Daniel Travis), no doubt in an attempt by screenwriter and director Chris Kentis to justify his film, declares, "actually this happens more often than you think." To which his wife Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) replies, "NOW you tell me". Followed eventually by the laugh-line, "I wanted to go skiing!" It's humor like this which nearly sustains "Open Water" for its 79 minute running time.
Mr. Kentis' script has its work cut out for it. The film spends little time setting up the two characters before sending them out on their ill-fated vacation. A little more thought about who these people are would have gone a long way towards making the audience care about the outcome of the film. The script has a few good moments - particularly a screaming rant by Mr. Travis which ends in "we PAID to do this!" - but lacks any kind of overarching theme, and at one point, the couple's bickering threatens to throw the film into parody.
Filmed on no budget, with a digital camera and essentially consisting of two amateur actors floating at sea for the majority of the film, Mr. Kentis must rely on his script and filmmaking talent to sustain the much-needed sense of dread. Judging by the character's names (Watkins and Kitner were the last names of the victims in "Jaws"), Mr. Kentis' heart was in the right place. Credit must be given to him and his cast for what they were able to accomplish (there are no special effects in the film, the actors are really in the water with those sharks), but eventually, even repeated shark scares wear thin.
Despite the "based on true events" premise, "Water" feels, in the end, pointless. The film is really just two people (and not very interesting people at that) floating in the ocean. Aside from a few scares and some welcome humor, what makes this more than an exercise in filmmaking? While it doesn't elicit the fear of a "Blair Witch" or "Jaws, what the film really brings to light is exactly the lengths to which struggling actors will go for work.
