Open Water
Written and Directed by: Chris Kentis
Starring: Blanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis

Amidst a summer of big clumsy special effects movies, Open Water is a welcome breath of fresh air.Shot for under $500,000, this indie flick was picked up at the Sundance Festival this year and ushered into theatres to provide the perfect alternative to horrendous big budget thrillers like Alien vs Predator andExorcist: The Beginning. Open Water proves that it’s not the special effects that generates suspense or scares, it’s the filmmaking.

Odds are, if you’ve heard of Open Water, you’ve heard it mentioned in the same breath as one of two movies:Jaws or The Blair Witch Project. Jaws is an obvious reference point only because the movie deals with a shark attack, while The Blair Witch Project was similarly a low budget horror movie that used a documentary style to evoke a previously untapped feeling of realism. The truth is, Open Water won’t remind you of either of these movies while you watch it… but it will grip you and eat away at you, no pun intended.

We’ve all heard plenty of travel horror stories, and let’s face it, whenever you go on a trip somewhere or find yourself in strange surroundings there’s always an underlying anxiety there. Whether you’re worrying about getting robbed, or eating unsafe food, or catching some deadly disease from the mosquitos, somehow you’re always prepared for the worst no matter how unlikely it is.Open Water brings our worst nightmares to life with the (mostly true) story of Daniel and Susan, a young couple like many others just trying to find a week away from their busy lives to escape to a warm and relaxing tropical locale. When they go on a group scuba diving excursion, their tour group accidentally leaves them behind, stranding them out in the middle of the ocean. This wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that no one knows they’re missing… and also the fact that there are jellyfish, thunderstorms, and much worse things waiting out there for them.

Writer/director Chris Kentis strives for realism in all aspects of this movie. There are no computer effects, and all the shark footage was done with real sharks. No genetically mutated uber-sharks, just regular everyday sharks that are actually known to attack humans from time to time. Although the movie is not done as a documentary, Kentis achieves a gritty home video look by using a handheld digital video camera. The result is that you feel like you’re stranded right there beside them. I haven’t seen a movie that so successfully conveys the feelings of isolation and hopelessness in a long time.Blanchard Ryan (Super Troopers) and Daniel Travis (Sex And The City) are essentially unknown actors, along with the rest of the secondary cast, which helps further ground the movie in reality. Their performances are also real andseemingly unscripted; their reactions to the worsening crisis no different than what you’d expect from any other human being.

Perhaps the most masterful aspect of Open Water is the pacing. There are no big shock moments, and even upon their initial discovery of being stranded, Susan and Daniel do not panic or immediately become terrified.Instead there is only a gradual building of dread, knotting your stomach further and further as time passes.The slow pace is a key element to the suspense, but Kentis never lets the movie get boring or drawn out.There are enough events that transpire along the way to keep you hooked, and cuts back to people with the tour group from time to time lead you to wonder if and when a rescue might be attempted.The total running time of the movie is about 90 minutes. The ending comes abruptly and leaves an eerie sense of uneasiness even after the credits have rolled.

There’s no doubt that Open Water shuns many Hollywood conventions, and as a result it may be too abnormal for some viewers who don’t have the patience to sit through a slow build up, or who can’t fathom a movie that takes place almost completely out in the middle of the water. But it is this unconventional approach that ultimately makes Open Water so effectively unsettling. It’s a simple concept and a simple movie, but executed so skillfully that it won’t be forgotten anytime soon. If you’ve had it up to here with bad CGI effects and horror movies that just aren’t scary, Open Water is the real thriller you’ve been waiting all summer for. — Sean