Who isn’t going to click on page two after a lead-up like the paragraph that you quoted?
Someone planning to see the movie :wink:
I just have no willpower when it comes to teasers like that… :-(
Okay, I went to see Open Water a few days ago. I wanted to think about it a little before posting.
No spoilers, but my first thought when the movie was over was that I wanted to be outside. Something about the movie had the effect of leaving me cold inside, and I felt like I needed fresh air and maybe sunlight to bring some cheer back. I was kind of quiet for hours after seeing it, too.
I don’t think the movie is likely to win any oscars, but do think it’s gotten a lot of unfair press. I’ve heard about soap-opera dialogue, poor writing, the sharks being the best actors, etc., and didn’t find those complaints to be fair. There is some flat performing and bad scripting early in the movie, but that all seems to go away around the time they start their vacation. Both characters are in good shape, but the one nude scene in the film I thought was gratuitous and detracted from the purpose of that scene. I know, I’m not one to complain about a pretty naked woman, it just seemed out of place and uncomfortable.
Some of the parts in the water stretch a bit more than I thought was necessary, but there were some really great scenes there as well, some funny and some very scary. The actors did a good job of portraying affection and anger and fear, and my suspension of belief was able to stay intact throughout. I was able to identify with them, and recognize them as people I might know in real life.
I won’t give anything away, but I think my impression of the ending will be pretty clear to anyone who read my other impressions above.
I agree with Tom in saying this is one of those “Irreversible” movies. I can’t say I liked it, really. It’s not that kind of movie. But I can say I was affected by it, and found myself thinking back to it long after I’d left the theater. Make of that what you will.
OKAY, ALL YOU PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T SEEN OPEN WATER, GO AWAY! WE’RE GOING TO BE DOING SOME SERIOUS SPOILER-ING STARTING WITH THE NEXT POST! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
-TomI liked the nudity, because it was so completely unsexual. She’s just laying there on the bed, on top of the covers because the air conditioner isn’t working, with whatever treatment creme she had on her face. It was a very human moment and served to reinforce how mundane these people were. I think it seemed out of place because we’re not her husband, and we’re used to having nudity sexed up for us audience members.
I was really astonished at the ending, partly because I didn’t think they would do that in the movie, and partly because I mistakenly thought it was based on a pair of divers in Florida who were rescued the next day.
Instead, Open Water seems to have been based on the story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were abandoned off the Great Barrier Reef. The boat crew didn’t even realize it until two days later. They were never found, although bits of their equipment were eventually recovered, including Eileen’s wet suit, which has sections ripped off probably from rubbing against coral. The speculation is that they’d both succumbed to dehydration. Eileen probably took off her suit because it was hot and then she drowned. Horrible stuff to think about.
Which is why, I think, Open Water works so well. It’s really raw and visceral and unrelenting. It’s a downward spiral from bad to worse to abject irredeemable hopelessness. I think the reviewer that Brett mentioned (David Edelstein at Slate) missed the point of the final scene. He implied that Daniel’s body jerking after Susan let go of it was a fake-out, making you think that maybe he was still alive. I didn’t think that for a second. I think it was clear that he was dead and that once she let it go, the sharks starting picking at it. He was just carrion and now she was alone. Again, horrible stuff.
And while I agree that’s it’s not a movie you ‘like’, I respect it all the more for being so grim, for showing you these everyday folks and forcing you to watch them unravel and die. I don’t find stuff like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, or Cabin Fever, or any number of slasher films in the least bit affecting, because I don’t care about the people involved. Those movies lurch along, I see a few gruesome impersonal deaths played for bloodsport, la-dee-dah.
But something like Open Water is infinitely more chilling. It’s rough in places and clearly a low budget endeavor, but I think this is the stuff of truly effective horror movies.
-TomI’ll go along with most of what you wrote. I had not considered the angle of the married folks not thinking about the nudity, probably because I can’t really think of a movie that’s presented it in such a way. :roll:
I didn’t think for one second that the husband was alive after she let him go. Even the way his body moved, quick jerks and dips, head never surfacing, made it pretty obvious what was happening. Worse was the revelation, clear on the woman’s face that when she let her husband go and the sharks got bold enough to pick at him, they then realized she was easy meat too and were coming for her. Her devil’s choice (and the choice she made) at that point was one of the most startling things I’ve ever come across in a movie, and was the final thing that made me want that sunshine so badly. It really worked, at least for me. I might have not liked seeing it, but damned if I’m not going to remember it.
One of the best scenes in the movie for me was the fight they had when their tempers started flaring. I thought it was hysterical, and just the sort of thing I could see happening. I think it was during that arguement that I really started feeling like I knew these people, and that’s when I started caring about what happened to them. The movie had me right there, if not sooner. Of course, now that I cared about them I was along for their ride down that roller-coaster spiral of ever-worsening possibilities.
This movie was far creepier than most horror fare out there today. Roddy McDowel’s character in Fright Night actually had a prescient moment when he said that all horror fans wanted to see any more were demented madmen in ski masks, running around hacking up young virgins. This movie probably won’t appeal to that knee-jerk crowd. But when the sun was going down on the water after the husband got bit, you could almost feel the hope draining out of the theater along with the light.
You were right when he said this wasn’t a shark movie. This was a movie about bad things happening to regular people, people who cared about each other but missed opportunities. They are shown missing opportunities before the dive to show they love each other, or to make love the night before the dive, oe to enjoy the company of their fellow divers, always having to do their own thing. Still, the movie makers manage to show this to you while at the same time making you identify with, and maybe really like, the main characters. It was a cute trick, I thought. That the ultimate engine of their demise would be sharks, cold, unemotional predatory fish, just struck that final nerve. Sharks couldn’t have struck that nerve all on their own, but combined with everything else, the sharks were the final, well-done element of the total despair that engulfed the movie.
It was especially strong because I walked in expecting to see a mediocre indie movie but got a really well-crafted (if low-budget) horror/drama/thriller/whatever it should be classed as/film.
You can tell I’ve thought this movie over a lot. I usually don’t give a film much thought after I’ve seen this, but I think this one will stick with me for a good long time.
Great analysis, Tom. I hadn’t considered a lot of your points.
This is an enticing bit of reivew. What’d she do? I’m probably not going to see it myself, so don’t worry about spoiling it for me.
Okay, Elhajj, you asked for it. SPOILER:
[color=white]
The final shot of the movie is her slipping off her BCD, an inflatable vest divers wear that would have kept her afloat indefinitely, and slipping under the water.
For maximum bleakness effect, her last moments are intercut with scenes of rescuers getting underway to search for them.[/color]
-TomYou can tell I’ve thought this movie over a lot. I usually don’t give a film much thought after I’ve seen this, but I think this one will stick with me for a good long time.
I’m like you, Joe. After it was over, my reaction was ‘Eww, what a wretched experience…’. It was only after a day or so of thinking about the effect it had on me that I could appreciate the impact. Unlike something like Irreversible, where the impact is immediate, Open Water took a little distance.
-Tom
Yeow. That’s brutal. Next time my wife complains about anything I am taking her to see this in the hope I can make her feel comparatively grateful.
You see! You see! We have lots of dandaliions in our lawn, but it is really not so bad.
Spoiler warning:
The expert consensus is that the real life couple was actually were eaten by Tiger sharks, which are considerably larger than the Bull and Gray Sharks in the movie.
The skipper of the boat was actually put on trial for manslaughter, but got off because of the couples’ diaries, which were really strange and made it seem possible that it was a murder suicide – there were statements like “I am ready to die now”, in his diary, and statement in her’s that were ever worse, like “Tom wants to die a violent death, and may have found the means to do so”. It seems ridiculous that they died deliberately (they would, after all, have still had to have somehow managed to find a negligent boat skipper to leave them behind), but the diary statement probably do raise enough of a reasonable doubt that a criminal conviction was impossible. The fact that her suit was recovered intact, and clearly not bitten by sharks, led credence to the theory that she might have been complicit.
I thought the movie was great, and very respectful. They actually created a sensible and thoughful explanation for the undamaged wetsuit - that she voluntarily took it off to drown (given the duration of her stay and the ocean currents, it would have been impossible to tread water for long) rather than wait around to be eaten alive.
Jesus, Stefan, what is it with your and your propensity for wacky theories and conspiracies? This is the movies forum, not politics!
The suicide stuff is really stupid, because – as you say – it requires finding a complicit boat captain. It also doesn’t explain the help note he supposedly wrote on his dive slate.
And if you want to kill yourself diving, there are much better ways than bobbing around in the ocean for a few days. Just hang out at 100 feet for an hour or so, letting enough nitrogen build up in your system that you don’t have enough air to surface safely. Or just fill your BCD at that depth so that you shoot up to the surface and violently decompress.
I’m curious where you figure the Lonergans being eaten by sharks is the ‘expert consensus’. I just did a bit of cursory reading and got the impression that all sorts of wacky theories have sprung up around these people.
According to this article, there’s no evidence they were attacked by sharks. Which makes perfect sense, since – statistically speaking – sharks simply don’t attack people. Shark attacks are almost invariably mistakes on the shark’s part. Someone gets bitten, the shark goes ‘oops’ and withdraws, that’s it. The movie’s representation of Daniel bleeding to death from a bite rather than being consumed is entirely plausible.
-TomI wondered a bit about the woman sinking so easily in the movie. She lost her weight belt earlier on (and they purposefully showed the weights clinking when they hit the bottom-a sort of shark dinner bell sound, which helps explain why the sharks came around shortly thereafter) and was still wearing her wetsuit. I’d think that after a day in the water she’d be kind of weak to fight hard to stay submerged.
Having said that I will immediately back off from arguing the point, since drowning in the middle of the ocean doesn’t exactly require a Harvard education to accomplish on a good day, let alone when you are weak, in pain, dehydrated and feeling a despair that I can thankfully only glean the very corners.
Regarding sharks–attacks depend on the type of shark. The ones in the move looked like blacktips to me. Acted like them too, with the partial porpoising. They aren’t considered particularly dangerous, except due to their size, but they do have serrated teeth, which makes them very capable of tearing chunks off of prey. Smooth-tooth fish-eaters that swallow prey whole are less likely to be attracted to big targets like people. Tigers, by the way, have heavy serrated teeth, and have a very wide menu tolerance. Bulls and tigers are very aggressive. Basically, from my understanding, the sharks in the movie acted very blacktip-like, opportunistic but wary. The scene where they start thrashing the water slowly towards her was horrifying.
The movie’s representation of Daniel bleeding to death from a bite rather than being consumed is entirely plausible.
All I know about sharks I learned from Jaws, but I’m pretty sure they toss blood and gore into the water to fish for sharks. I always thought if you had a bleeding cut in the water, it would draw sharks to you.
I leave the nutty politics for you west-coast actor hippies.
Nobody knows what happened – I’m just telling you what the evidence was at the trial, and how the trial was resolved. The guy got off because his defense raised a reasonable doubt because of the diaries. Of course I think the murder/suicide (or even worse, the "plan to start a new life elsewhere with a clean slate) are highly implausible – but those diary readings I described are pretty weird.
The dive slate part is pretty wild, although there’s speculation it is a hoax, since the case got a lot of attention locally between the incident and when the slate was found months later. There were a lot of people reporting “iinformation” because of the sensational trial.
I’m curious where you figure the Lonergans being eaten by sharks is the ‘expert consensus’. I just did a bit of cursory reading and got the impression that all sorts of wacky theories have sprung up around these people.
From the fact that they were abandoned in tiger shark-invested waters, in the Great Barrier reef, and that’s what the local experts figured happened. Sharks don’t typically attack humans other than by accident, but they are also scavengers, and if they were listly floating around (alive or dead) - just ask the Indianapolis guys (there was blood in the water from wounded, but most people were o.k. when they went in the water) – it seems very plausible that something would eventually happen, and I thought the directors did a great job of conveying that.
Newspaper article excerpts you can google up:
Tom and Eileen Lonergan disappeared off the coast of Australia, abandoned by a dive boat and presumably killed by circling tiger sharks…The Outer Edge Dive boat crew miscounted the number of people on board when they left the rim of the Great Barrier Reef after a day of diving. The Lonergans, who were experienced divers, were still beneath the surface.
Later, back at Port Douglas, people stumbled across evidence of the forgotten divers: their shoes and their dive bag were still there. A shuttle bus driver waiting to ferry them back to their hostel became concerned. The crew was not – not until two days later when the boat captain found the dive bag still sitting there with Tom Lonergan’s wallet inside.
By then, it was too late. The Lonergans had been left in a place called “Fish City,” a great spot for diving and also a feeding ground for tiger sharks. Experts testified months later that the sharks probably moved in that evening, circling the couple, and the Lonergans probably didn’t live long.
and:
There were dozens of sharks around the reef at the time, according to local fisherman Mick Bird, who was a few miles away that day. ‘Every time we threw a line, we’d pull in a shark - they should rename that place Shark City,’ he said.
and:
Ben Cropp, the author and underwater documentary-maker, said tiger sharks were the most likely culprit in the Lonergans’ deaths. “They just circle and watch,” he said. "They may do this for an hour before moving closer, and may follow you for another hour before they take that first bite. And then you don’t have a chance because they have made up their mind
So there, hippie. It was either that or gradual dehydration and exposure (or drowning after voluntarily taking off their suits to try to swim better on the surface), unless you buy into the nutty-sounding murder/suicide; double-suicide or scam.
The ones in the move looked lie blacktips to me.
They were actually real Bull and Gray Sharks in the movie-- and the actors were in the water with them – Bull Sharks are very aggressive, as you indicated, and account for far more shark attacks than any other kind of sharks. Gray sharks are generally not dangerous, but in some areas of the world there’s aggressive schools where divers won’t even go in the water with them nearby.
Ah, so you’re just talking about various people speculating. A red flag always goes up for me when someone says something about what “experts” say.
You must not have read the article I linked, which has a different “expert” perspective:
Experts at the inquest speculated that, drifting helplessly back and forth on the tides in the building heat of the tropical sun, the couple may have been driven delirious by dehydration and have voluntarily struggled out of their cumbersome outfits.
FWIW, it’s pretty compelling evidence that their gear was found intact. If they’d been killed by shark attacks, that wouldn’t have been the case.
-TomNo, I was just repeating the news report, which I excerpted above, which specifically used the words “experts” ---- “Experts testified months later that the [tiger] sharks probably moved in that evening”. I guess there was competing expert testimony and not a consensus.
There are also conflicting reports on the wetsuit, etc. - some say it was definitely their stuff because it was labelled, etc., but other reports say that it was just presumed to be her wetsuit because it was in the same area as she went missing and was the “same size”. The label stuff sounds pretty detailed so it’s probably true – they’re really getting creative if they made that up.
Also - the gear was not found intact – it was ripped, and some “experts” indicated that it was torn by sharks, but the less melodramatic reports seem to indicate that it was just ripped from being dragged over coral or something.
In other words, there’s a lot of conflicted reports.
Good call on the nude scene by the way - I liked the way that was handled as well.
Also - the gear was not found intact – it was ripped, and some “experts” indicated that it was torn by sharks, but the less melodramatic reports seem to indicate that it was just ripped from being dragged over coral or something.
You’ve obviously read more about the case than I, but I can’t imagine the damage caused by a shark killing someone through her gear could possibly be confused for the gear having been dragged over coral.
FWIW, the article I linked had this: “Inflatable dive jackets marked with Tom and Eileen’s names were later washed ashore north of Port Douglas, along with their tanks - still buoyed up by a few remnants of air - and one of Eileen’s fins. None showed any signs of the damage you would expect from a violent end, suggesting that the couple were not the victim of a shark attack, as the film suggests.”
I realize, as you say, we can never know what happened to them. But the hypothesis that they were killed by sharks strikes me as cheap sensationalism to make for a more media friendly story.
BTW, knowing what I know now, I wish we’d been able to see this at Sundance. It would have been quite a discovery. Because I really like horror films, this could end up on my list of favorite movies of the year, along with other Sundance discoveries like Garden State and Last Life in the Universe.
-Tom
Yeah, I knew about this movie then and would have picked it, but it only played prior to our arrival. I think there’s a good chance it’ll end up in my top 10 of the year, although people should obviously go to it with realistic expectations – it is a small budget, independent film. It sort of is Blair Witch Project meets Jaws.
See, from the hype that’s what I thought going in, but did not leave with that impression. It’s not an amalgamation of other movies with similar features, but rather something unique unto itself. It did suffer from the usual low-budget limitations, but they didn’t really feel like a hindrance to me once the movie got rolling. Especially after seeing some of the points Tom made that I missed, I’m thinking this movie may have been a bit denser than I realized, and might take a couple viewings to really catch everything. Pretty amazing for a film that left me just flat-out despairing right after I finished watching it.
I’m certainly going to see this one again when it comes out on DVD, and will decide whether to buy then. So far this movie is pretty solid on my top ten of the year.