Open Water by Steve Rudd

I really don't understand why this movie was ever made. Based on true events, this follows a couple of young lovers (Daniel Travis and blonde bombshell Blanchard Ryan) on a diving day-out as part of a vacation they're taking together.

Before we know it, they've been stranded in the middle of the Ocean (well, roughly fifteen miles from land) due to the diving trip leader showing a truly unbelievable level of incompetence on his part due to a mix-up with his observational skills and a lack of communication with one of his co-workers about how many people had gone down underwater. It seems strange that a small group of about twenty people on one little boat didn't notice that two people were missing, just like nobody noticed the fact that two gas cylinders were still unaccounted for when the boat turned back around and headed for shore.

As soon as the boat's gone and the man and woman are left alone to ponder their nightmarish situation, the movie does become a bit of a stagnant bore. From this point forth it shares much in common with the divers, because there's literally nowhere for it to go.

Instead, what you get is roughly 45 minutes worth of them treading Ocean water, not knowing what to do. Should they stay put in hope that the boat will return for them, or should they start swimming in order to help save themselves? It's just a shame that no land can be visually traced and it's hard to know which direction to swim in. Admittedly, there a few nice wide-angle shots of the ocean and any impressively moody cloud formations in the vicinity, but otherwise this really cannot be classed as high-quality entertainment. Not when these two wind up having a domestic slanging match and start blaming each other for being stuck in their damn awful predicament, just as the barracuda start biting and the native shark population begins to circle and scare the wetsuits clean off their backs.

First the bloke gets bitten and winds up dead, and then - just as the diving trip leader realises he's left two people out there in the middle of the ocean and duly alerts the emergency rescue services - she goes under and fails to re-emerge. And that's it. The story is over. The tragedy is that there wasn't a story as such: in any shape or form.

Bearing in mind that this was based on a true story, I did hope they would both survive, but I suppose they didn't have much chance. In any case, no film-maker would have adapted a story of that nature, and if they had miraculously survived such an ordeal in real life, they would have inevitably been killed off in the movie adaptation in order to make the movie seem that little bit more exciting. But Open Water just isn't exciting or raw emotion-provoking in the least. In fact it's a total waste of time. www.openwatermovie.co.uk

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