Just a short review today as I'm struggling for motivation. I'll be back on it tomorrow.
'Open Water' (2003) is a film that was advertised on a DVD I owned and used to watch a lot. I can't for the life of me remember what that DVD was, but I do remember the trailer for this film, and seeing it on Amazon prime I decided to finally give it a watch. I kind of wish I hadn't. The film follows a couple, Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel Kitner (Daniel Travis), who is left stranded in shark-infested waters after going on a scuba diving tour. This set up is a great one for building tension, but the film fails miserably. Nothing of any note happens until the final fifteen minutes of the film, instead, we are just treated to endless shots of the two in open water with nothing happening. I mean they don't even get stranded until 30 minutes in and the film isn't even 90 minutes long. I would be lying if I said it was completely devoid of tension. Ther is one scene where we get a POV of Susan as she bobs in the water and occasionally the view goes beneath the waves where we get small glimpses of a huge group of sharks. This moment is a genuinely great bit of tension within the dull nothingness that proceeds it. On a technical level, the film is quite shabby. All he in the water shots are fine, but whenever they are on land the shot choices and editing are properly off, often zooming in for no apparent reason. The acting in the film is fine, with neither actor wowing me but both doing decent jobs. Maybe it is just because I am not in the best of moods, but I just did not get into this film at all and I found it an entirely dull experience, which is a shame because I think the concept is one that opens up a lot of possibilities. But the film doesn't capitalise on this and ends up just being mainly a waste of time.
