Open Water DVD > Reviews > Jumping The Shark

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Hated it
Story	Very ordinary
Characters / Performances	Weak
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Weak

Advantages:	Only 79 Minutes
Disadvantages:	Boring, Don't Believe The Hype, Annoying Characters, Crap Sharks

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Sometimes a film opens at a festival like Sundance and cause’s frenzy among studios who want to buy it. Like Blair Witch before it, Open Water was a low budget movie snapped up in a seven-figure deal by a studio. Now I thought Blair Witch was a clever movie diluted by the time it reached UK shores with the hype that surrounded it. Open Water’s hook is that it features sharks and it’s low budget. Sadly the promise of a ‘Jaws meets Blair Witch’ as exclaimed in the advertising leaves the view feeling very cheated.

Susan and Daniel are a business couple who take a vacation to the tropics. Whilst there they take in a diving trip in the sky blue ocean. However when they surface they find that they are alone and the boat they ventured on is nowhere in sight. With nothing around them, it soon becomes a dilemma for the pair on what to do. It doesn’t help when the waters they are floating in happen to be shark infested.

There was a Viz comic strip a few years back called ‘The Pathetic Sharks’, this is what I was reminded of once I’d wasted 79 minutes of my life on Open Water. Yes, sharks can be scary when they’re big and looming like Jaws or perhaps incredibly realistic when they’re thrashing about in Deep Blue Sea. However the sharks on show here although real are quite dull and not really threatening. Of course the budget of the movie wouldn’t allow for big animatronics etc but compared to Jaws where the shark is barely seen, everything just falls flat.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that you’re spending all your time with two characters and nothing else. Perhaps it would work if you cared for their plight but ten minutes in the company of this pair is an eternity. I really wanted the sharks to move in for the kill quite early on in the movie, as the pair were incredibly annoying. Their verbal sparring is incredibly trite and dull; Susan comes across as a whinger while Daniel is just a one-way trip to dullsville.

The film is shot on DV video and actually looks ok, I have no problem with movies shot on video as I think they offer something different. However the story must stand up and sadly Open Water doesn’t warrant a feature. There are loads of moments where you see montages of island life etc which serve no purpose and just seem cut into the movie to justify a feature running time.

So in closing, Open Water is a shark movie with no bite, no tension, crap characters and pathetic sharks. Switch off your TV set and go and rent something less boring instead.