Open Water (film)

Open Water
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Chris Kentis
Produced by	Laura Lau Estelle Lau
Written by	Chris Kentis
Starring	Blanchard Ryan Daniel Travis
Music by	Graeme Revell
Cinematography	Chris Kentis Laura Lau
Editing by	Chris Kentis
Studio	Lions Gate Films Plunge Pictures Eastgate Pictures
Distributed by	Lionsgate
Release date(s)	October 26, 2003 (2003-10-26) (Hamptons) August 6, 2004 (2004-08-06)
Running time	79 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$500,000
Box office	$54,667,954

Open Water is a 2003 horror film loosely based on the true story of an American couple, Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who in 1998 went out with a scuba diving group, Outer Edge Dive Company, on the Great Barrier Reef, and were accidentally left behind because the dive-boat crew failed to take an accurate headcount.^[1] The film was financed by writer/director Chris Kentis and his wife, producer Laura Lau, both avid scuba divers.^[2] The film cost $500,000 to make and was bought by Lions Gate Entertainment for $2.5 million after its screening at the Sundance Film Festival. Lions Gate spent a further $8 million on distribution and marketing.^[3] The film ultimately grossed $55 million worldwide (including $30 million from the North American box office alone).^[4]

Before filming began, the Lonergans' experience was re-created for an episode of ABC's 20/20, and the segment was repeated after the release of Open Water. Clips from the film were also featured on NBC in Troubled Waters, a Dateline episode (July 7, 2008) with Matt Lauer interviewing two professional divers, Richard Neely and Ally Dalton, who were left adrift at the Great Barrier Reef by a dive boat on May 21, 2008.^[5]

Plot

Daniel Kintner (Daniel Travis) and Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) are an American couple frustrated that their hard-working lives don't allow them to spend much time together. They decide to pack up and head out on a scuba diving vacation to help relieve their everyday stress and improve their relationship. On their second day, Daniel and Susan join a group scuba dive. Some on board their boat express nervousness about sharks, but the dive instructor dismisses the danger with a joke. A head count is taken, and the passenger total is recorded as 20. Daniel and Susan get in the water along with the rest of the divers.

One man, Seth, finds that he has forgotten his mask. He is upset over it and he gets verbally pushy with the boat's crew, but knowing the expectations of safe diving practices, he grudgingly remains on the boat. Daniel and Susan decide to separate briefly from the group while underwater. Meanwhile, a woman who is having problems with pressure equalization returns early to the boat with her partner. Including Seth, there are now three people back on the boat, and this is recorded by one of the crew as three "ticks" on their tally sheet. After this tally, Seth asks to borrow the mask of the woman who just returned, and he pressures the woman's reluctant dive partner into another dive with him.

The two men leave the boat, but the dive tally sheet is not changed because the crew member maintaining it did not see them depart. Half an hour later, the rest of the group begins returning to the boat, and during that period the crew member diligently increments the tally as each diver arrives back on board. Going by the tally sheet, the total now on board comes to 20, though in reality the accurate count is 18. Daniel and Susan, having separated from the group earlier, are still underwater and have not yet realized that the others have all returned. The boat leaves the site, and although several belongings of Daniel and Susan are sitting openly in the passenger area of the boat, most individuals in the dive group do not know others beyond their dive partners, so no one happens to associate the stored belongings of Daniel and Susan with their absence on the boat.

Not long after the boat leaves, Daniel and Susan return to the surface and look for it. They see a boat, presumably the dive boat, gradually receding away in the distance. They believe the group will return to recover them in reasonable time, as they assume someone on board the boat will notice their belongings. Stranded at sea, Daniel and Susan rehash a few old disputes, bicker about the wisdom of swimming for occasional boats seen in the distance, battle bouts of hunger and mental exhaustion, and later realize by looking down through the water while wearing their masks that they have likely drifted far from the dive site. In addition to the worry that their rescue may be growing less certain, they also realize that sharks have been circling them below the surface. Susan is worried about the sharks, but Daniel tries to calm her, saying, "Sharks are attracted to wounded fish," and concludes that they should try to stay calm and not splash around. Soon, jellyfish appear and sting Daniel and Susan, while several times sharks are coming in very close, seemingly trying to determine if the couple are viable prey. Susan receives a small bite on the leg from a shark, but doesn't immediately realize it. Daniel notices this as he goes under to check out the light "nipping" feeling she has. He sees that it is a small fish feeding on the exposed flesh of her bite wound, but he does not tell Susan that the wound is a shark bite. Later, a shark bites Daniel and the wound begins to bleed profusely. Susan removes her weight belt and uses it to apply pressure to Daniel's wound. He appears to begin to go into shock. Susan is now very afraid, telling him to "just keep breathing." The tight-fitting neoprene wetsuits are apparently keeping them from fully realizing they have been sustaining small bites. After night falls, during a strong storm, sharks return and attack Daniel again, killing him.

The next morning, the belongings of Daniel and Susan are finally noticed on the long-since-moored boat by an arriving member of its crew. He opens their duffel bag and finds their scuba certification cards with their photos on them, and suddenly he remembers the couple clearly and realizes they must have been left out at the dive site the previous day. A search for the couple is begun in earnest. Meanwhile Susan, having held on to Daniel through the night, realizes he is dead and releases him into the water, where sharks attack him in a feeding frenzy. Susan turns away from the lifeless bobbing movement of Daniel's floating body as the sharks pull him under. After putting on her goggles, she looks beneath the surface and sees several large sharks now circling her. One seems to dart in her direction. Susan looks around one last time for any sign of coming rescue, and seeing none, removes her scuba gear, pushes it away, removes her mask, and goes underwater to drown before the sharks can attack. After Susan slips below the water's surface, the film scene flashes elsewhere, revealing a fishing crew cutting open a newly-caught shark's abdomen and stomach, and finding a waterproof diving camera, ostensibly that of Daniel and Susan. One of the fishermen asks off-handedly to another, "Wonder if it works?"

Cast

• Blanchard Ryan as Susan Watkins
• Daniel Travis as Daniel Kintner
• Saul Stein as Seth
• Michael E. Williamson as Davis
• Cristina Zenato as Linda
• John Charles as Junior

Steve Lemme of Broken Lizard makes a cameo as a tourist on the scuba boat.

Production

The filmmakers used living sharks, as opposed to the mechanical ones used in Jaws or the computer-generated fish in Deep Blue Sea. The film strives for authentic shark behavior, shunning the stereotypical exaggerated shark behavior typical of many films. The movie was shot on digital video. As noted above, the real-life events that inspired this story took place in the southern Pacific Ocean, and this film moves the location to the Atlantic Ocean, being filmed entirely in the Bahamas.

Week of the DVD release

Three days after the DVD release of Open Water, filmmakers Chris Kentis, Laura Lau, and their seven-year-old daughter had their own encounter with ocean dangers in what the Associated Press called "a real-life version of their shark thriller Open Water." Kentis stated that the DVD release was "meaningless" in comparison with his nightmarish experience that same week. Vacationing in Thailand, Kentis and his family survived the tsunami that killed 229,866 people. Lau and her daughter were trapped in a second-floor Internet cafe but escaped, as described in an AP story:

Lau, 41, said she pulled about a half-dozen Swedish tourists to safety using a bamboo ladder before using it herself to escape from the cafe's balcony with Sabrina on her back. They reached Kentis by hiking in waist-deep water back to the hotel. The couple then hiked several miles into the mountains with their luggage because they were afraid another massive wave was coming. They took two minicabs to Phuket's east coast, which Kentis said seemed almost unaffected by the tsunami. "When we got there, it was all people on yachts having a good time. It was just surreal," Kentis said. "Two hours later, our kids were swimming in this beautiful hotel pool and we're ordering food."^[6]

Reception

The film was made for a budget recorded by Box Office Mojo as $500,000, grossed $1 million in 47 theaters on its opening weekend and made a lifetime gross of $55 million.^[7] The film divided critics, however. Most praised it as an exercise in expertly minimalist filmmaking, but some critics found the film difficult to sit through. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert praised the film highly: "Rarely, but sometimes, a movie can have an actual physical effect on you. It gets under your defenses and sidesteps the 'it's only a movie' reflex and creates a visceral feeling that might as well be real.",^[8] but A. O. Scott in The New York Times lamented that it "succeeds in mobilizing the audience's dread, but it fails to make us care as much as we should about the fate of its heroes."^[9] The film has a 72% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[10]

Awards

Blanchard Ryan won a Saturn Award for Best Actress in 2004 for her performance.

Sequel

• In 2006, a sequel, Open Water 2: Adrift, was released, which also claimed to be based on a true story.

See also

• Low budget film
• List of killer shark films

References

1. ^ Hollywood's 'Open Water' film earns rave reviews
2. ^ EW
3. ^ "Open Water - Box Office Data, Movie News, Cast Information". The Numbers. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2004/OPENW.php. Retrieved 2010-08-20. 
4. ^ "Open Water (2004)". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=openwater.htm. Retrieved 2010-08-20. 
5. ^ Transcript of Troubled Waters
6. ^ "Open Water filmmakers survive tsunami," People, USA Today, December 31, 2004.
7. ^ Open Water statistics at Boxofficemojo.com
8. ^ Ebert, Roger. "Open Water," Chicago Sun-Times, August 6, 2004.
9. ^ Scott, A.O. "Hanging With Sharks, at Their Dinner Hour," New York Times, August 6, 2004.
10. ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/open_water/

External links

• Official website
• Open Water at AllRovi
• Open Water at Box Office Mojo
• Open Water at the Internet Movie Database
• Open Water at Rotten Tomatoes