Open Water

Open Water

Released in 2003

Directed by Chris Kentis

Open Water is based on a true story about an American couple that leaves their hectic lives for a scuba diving trip out on the Great Barrier Reef.  However, because of the disorganization of the boat crew, the amount of people are miscalculated by two and when the couple come back to the surface to return to their boat, they find that it had left without them and are stranded in the middle of the ocean.  The couple is stranded out there for hours as they see sharks circling and splashing around them.  Eventually, the film ends with the couple dying in the ocean.

This film was very short for a feature film, running only about eighty minuets.  It was shot using a small digital video camera, much like the ones we use here at UArts.  One of the aspects that really intrigued me about this film (as a film-maker myself) was how much they could do with the limited technology that they had.  They were able to make the picture so clear and coherent that only someone in filmmaking would be able to distinguish the difference between the technology they use to make a blockbuster film and what they used for Open Water.

The film is very successful in keeping the audience on the edge of their seat by using a motif by repeatedly showing what looks like dorsal fins of sharks swimming around them.  You never visually see a shark attack one of the characters, which in my opinion makes the film even more scary because it makes the audience use their imagination by thinking what could happen to them.  Another motif used in the film is the use of boats that travel by them periodically at a far distance to where they are in the water.  To me, this gives the audience a sense of hope for the couple and makes them yell at the screen, telling them to swim for the boat. 

Towards the end of the movie, the girl who is still alive is floating in the water holding onto the dead body of her boyfriend.  She decides to let go of him as she starts to see dozens of sharks swimming around her and lets herself fall down under water and that is where the film ends.  I thought that this was the most powerful scene in the movie not only because of the characters decision to let herself die that way but because it doesn’t show exactly how she does and leaves that up to the imagination of the audience which the film does a lot and in turn makes it a very successful independent film.

Brian Herron