As the summer movie season sputtered to a halt, the film offerings came to compile little more than so many entries on a list I like to entitle “Things that should be rad…but aren’t”—See: robot coup (I, Robot), Doc Ock (Spiderman 2), aging rockers in emotional rehab (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster), etc. Now, officially, we can add “Watching Yuppies Become Shark Bait” to that list. One would think that the “based on actual events” tag might lend a healthy dose of reality to Open Water, already drowning from the opening frame in its shoddy DV-cam “realism.” One would be wrong. In fact, the film’s claim to truth is suspect at best, taking its premise from a harrowing account of two stranded divers and quickly devolving into speculation. There’s no inherent problem with fictionalizing a true story, movies have been doing it for years, but Open Water is one of those rare things—a fictionalized account which grows less interesting the more it’s embellished.

It would be far too easy to blame the altitude. After all, some outside factor must have made Sundance audiences inexplicably fawn and fall into a bidding war, but ultimately the film’s all-encompassing failure rests firmly on the shoulders of little-filmmaker-that-could Chris Kentis (who served as writer, director, cinematographer, editor, and head of craft services). At a recent screening of the film, Kentis repeatedly steered audiences away from inevitable Jaws comparisons (and for obvious reasons, namely Jaws’ vast technical and emotional superiority), citing Dogme films as his greatest source of inspiration. And, ideally, such an influence would have led to sparse camerawork and minimal score, stranding the spectator along with upwardly mobile and emotionally vacant couple Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan) as they make their slow descent into the deep, both psychologically and physically. Sadly, this is far from the case, as whatever minimal tension Kentis manages to build out at sea is interrupted time and again by flashbacks to the goings-on on the tropical island Daniel and Susan have just departed. Whether he’s cutting to laughably ominous extreme close-ups of an iguana or to a group of partying tourists for an overdose of ironic counterpoint, Kentis eschews minimalism for the bombastic to counterproductive ends. The film’s score is perhaps the prime example of this—authentic “island” chanting drones like deep South spirituals interspersed with equally misplaced urination and Shark Week humor.

Ultimately, what should be a harrowing look at our modern growing discomfort with nature adds up to little more than a final, fatal bonding expedition for a couple that seemingly has remarkably little to live for. Susan is forcibly shoved into an emotionally stilted working-woman archetype from frame one (though this doesn’t prohibit her from basking in a full-frontal moment that has no narrative purpose whatsoever…and isn’t that always the best kind?), and Daniel wallows in his own inability to be interesting in any capacity. Once they’re out to sea and their situation grows progressively more perilous, the actors’ theatrical backgrounds threaten to overwhelm the film’s alternately absurdly flippant and melodramatic dialogue, even as stereotypes become more firmly entrenched. See Susan devolve from a self-possessed career gal into a whimpering wreck who clings to her burly hunk of man. See Daniel mask his emasculated state by lashing out at Susan. See Susan accuse Daniel of being a world class screw-up. See two people with virtually no mutual respect foolishly reassure each other that they deserve to survive. It’s almost enough to make one pity the sharks.
—SUZANNE SCOTT