Open Water (film)
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| Open Water | |
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| Directed by | Chris Kentis |
| Produced by | Laura Lau |
| Written by | Chris Kentis |
| Starring | Blanchard Ryan Daniel Travis |
| Music by | Graeme Revell |
| Distributed by | Lions Gate Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | August 6, 2004 |
| Running time | 79 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $130,000 |
| Gross revenue | $54,667,954 |
| Followed by | Open Water 2 |
Open Water is a 2004 film 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] None of the 26 other divers or five crew members noticed that the couple was missing.
The film was financed by writer/director Chris Kentis and his wife, producer Laura Lau, both avid scuba divers.[citation needed] The movie cost $130,000 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 [2]. The film ultimately grossed $55 million worldwide (including $30 million from the North American box office alone)[3].
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.[4]
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[edit] Characters and story
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. The last names of the main characters (as revealed on their ID cards) are the same as Alex Kintner and Chrissie Watkins, two of the shark attack victims in Jaws.
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. There is a head count, 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 gets upset over it and gets verbally pushy with the boat's crew, but knowing the expectations of safe diving practices, he begrudgingly stays on the boat. Daniel and Susan decide to separate from the group while underwater. A woman who is having problems with pressure equalization returns early to the boat with her partner. There are already three people back on the boat, so 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 surfaced, and he coerces the woman's reluctant dive partner into another dive with him. The tally is not changed because the man maintaining the tally did not see this happen. Half an hour later, the rest of the group begins returning to the boat, and during that period the tally is incremented normally as each diver arrives on board. Going by the two earlier tallies, the total on board comes to 20, though in reality the accurate count is 18. The boat leaves, and although a few belongings of Daniel and Susan are on the boat, most of the dive group do not know the others beyond their dive partners, so no one happens to associate the stored belongings of Daniel and Susan with their absence on the boat.
Soon after the boat leaves, Daniel and Susan return to the surface and look for the boat. They see a boat gradually receding away in the distance and believe the group will return in reasonable time for them, as they assume someone on board would 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 eventually notice sharks circling them below the surface. Susan is concerned 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 they are stung by jellyfish, while several times sharks appear to try to figure out what they are. Susan receives a small bite from a shark, but doesn't realize it. Daniel notices this as he goes under to check out the "nipping" feeling she has. He sees that it is a small fish feeding on the exposed flesh of her bite wounds, but he doesn't tell her 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 herself is afraid, telling him to "just keep breathing." The tight-fitting neoprene wetsuits are apparently keeping them from fully realizing they are sustaining small bites. That night, during a strong storm, sharks return and attack Daniel again, killing him.
The next morning, the pair's belongings are finally noticed on the long-since-moored boat by a crew member. He opens their duffel bag and finds their scuba certification cards with their photos on them, and suddenly he remembers the couple 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 odd bobbing movement of Daniel's floating body as the sharks tug him under. After putting on her goggles, she looks under the surface and sees several large sharks circling her in the water; one seems to dart in her direction. Susan looks around one last time for any sign of rescue, and seeing none, she removes her scuba gear, pushes it away, removes her mask, and goes underwater to drown before the sharks attack.
After Susan slips below the water's surface, a crew of fishermen is seen elsewhere cutting open a caught shark's abdomen and stomach, finding the waterproof diving camera and asking off-handedly, "Wonder if it works?"
[edit] Cast
- Blanchard Ryan — Susan
- Daniel Travis — Daniel
- Saul Stein — Seth
- Michael E. Williamson — Davis
- Cristina Zenarro — Linda
- John Charles — Junior
Steve Lemme of Broken Lizard makes a cameo as a tourist on the scuba boat.
[edit] 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 movie 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 Caribbean, being filmed entirely in the Bahamas.
[edit] 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.'[5]
[edit] Reception
On a budget recorded by Boxofficemojo.com as $500,000, the film was a spectacular success, grossing $1 million in 47 theaters on its opening weekend and making a total lifetime gross of $55 million.[6] The film divided critics, however. While many praised it as an exercise in expertly minimalist filmmaking, 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."[7], 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."[8]
[edit] Awards
Blanchard Ryan won a Saturn Award for Best Actress (film) in 2004 for her performance.
[edit] Sequel
- In 2006, a sequel was made (Open Water 2: Adrift), which also claimed to be based on a true story.
[edit] See also
- Open Water 2 (2006)
[edit] References
- ^ Hollywood's 'Open Water' film earns rave reviews
- ^ http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2004/OPENW.php
- ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=openwater.htm
- ^ Transcript of Troubled Waters
- ^ "Open Water filmmakers survive tsunami," People, USA Today, December 31, 2004.
- ^ Open Water statistics at Boxofficemojo.com
- ^ Ebert, Roger. "Open Water," Chicago Sun-Times, August 6, 2004.
- ^ Scott, A.O. "Hanging With Sharks, at Their Dinner Hour," New York Times, August 6, 2004.
