The spirits of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water come together in Open Water, an unendurably tense and terrifyingly plausible maritime disaster tale based on a real-life catastrophe. With a couple of unfamiliar performers and unassuming digital video technology, American director Chris Kentis has given us a masterclass in bracingly intelligent, back-to-basics filmmaking. He has written, produced, directed and edited a low-fi thriller so gripping that after it was over I found the muscles in my arms and legs ached from being tensed up with sheer suspense for an hour and a half.
This ordeal begins in the most seductively low-key way. A couple of twentysomethings are preparing to go on holiday; Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan) make a handsome pair. Obviously stressed out in their demanding jobs, they are taking a restorative scuba-diving break. The sheer ordinariness of everything — their car, their worries about connections for their laptop while away — lays a foundation for the nightmare that is still behind the horizon.
Then comes the awful day. Daniel and Susan and 18 other resort guests go scuba-diving. It is important that there be an even number because, as the group leader explains, for safety reasons they have to enter the water in a ”buddy” system of pairs. After a mix-up with the diving masks, the boat happily chugs off for home — leaving Daniel and Susan swimming around underwater. When they bob up to the surface, they find themselves utterly alone, in open water, with the sharks circling. On the ocean, as in space, no one can hear you scream.
The horrible believability of that cock-up is a thousand times scarier than any routine thriller. With pitiless increments, Kentis shows us the panic and horror dawning on Daniel and Susan. They row like any ordinary couple. Then the fabric of their lives and their identities is stripped away, as if immersed in a gigantic acid bath. Little by little, they cease to be affluent professionals, cease to be humans, and now rank lower in the food chain than the humblest fish.
Nature, until this point, has been exotic and picturesque. Daniel and Susan have drifted ecstatically among some fish that looked bizarre, but friendly and faintly absurd, like mute characters dreamt up by Lewis Carroll. In an instant, these same creatures become terrifyingly blank — not obviously hostile, but massively indifferent.
As an editor, Kentis brilliantly and unobtrusively controls the passage of time as the hours drag painfully past: with masterly control, he allows long takes to succeed each other, and doesn’t worry about providing visual excitement or spurious dramatic interest. There are simply medium close-ups of the principals, alternating generally with long shots of them as small as dots, as if from the standpoint of an indifferent, Olympian observer, or a non-existent rescue helicopter.
Then there is the noise of the sea itself. Not the gush and roar of a storm, but the incessant trickle and slap of an entirely calm ocean, sweetly oblivious to the people in danger. It all adds up to a chilling and nerve-frazzling evening at the movies. Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water. — Â