Sunday 27 November 2005

Open Water (2003)

This indie film was inexpensively made with unknown lead actors and took a respectable amount at the box office.  I understand that some people found it really scary, but I found it more on the annoying side.  It concerns a yuppie couple on holiday in the Caribbean who take a scuba diving excursion; through human error, the boat leaves without them and they are left floating in the ocean and being carried by the tides until they are surrounded by a school of sharks.  Their reactions seemed very real -- first hope, then the tendency to blame each other, then reconciliation, and finally despair. All well and good but not entertainment by any means.  To say it is based on a true story is a little ambiguous since if there were no survivors, the film-makers could hardly know how in fact the events played out.  I guess this is a spoiler, but the film has received sufficient publicity for the outcome to be known up front.

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