The horror genre is traditionally put into the broader group of speculative fiction, and many will find arguments in it with horror plots usually dealing with ghosts, demons, monster mutants and similar creatures you can't find in real life. However, some of the most effective horror films not only dealt with situations that might look like banal and ordinary, but actually represented dramatic reconstructions or real events. One such example can be found in Open Water, a 2003 film written, produced and directed by Chris Kentis.
The plot of "Open Water" is inspired by the 1998 case of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, a couple that went missing in January 1998 while scuba diving at Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Their fictional counterparts, played by Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis, are Susan Watkins and her boyfriend Daniel Kintner. In order to affirm their relationship, they decide to go on a vacation in the Caribbean and enjoy some scuba diving. While doing so, they get separated from the group, and the boat crew makes a fatal mistake during the head count, believing that they are back on the boat. When Susan and Daniel come to the surface, they realize that the boat is gone and, later, that it is unlikely to return. They suddenly find themselves lost in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by endless water, suffering from hunger, thirst and exhaustion and, even worse, having to worry about sharks that began to circle and prepare to eat them.
Chris Kentis produced the film with his wife Laura Lau; both spouses were experienced scuba divers and, as such, put great effort into making the film as authentic as possible, not only in scenes that reconstruct the tragic mistake that led to the Lonnergans' disappearance, but also their own ideas of how the couple met their end. The result of their efforts is an incredibly realistic film that often looks like found footage horror, like many of those that were becoming so fashionable at the time.
Part of the reason for the film's semi-documentary look is its extremely low budget. Kentis and Lau had to rely on relatively unknown Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis as protagonists, and the two cast members also had to agree to some details of the shooting many of their colleagues would not. While the nudity, which is used in a couple of introductory scenes, was much easier, actually shooting scenes in the sea with real-life sharks circling around them was probably very challenging. Yet Ryan and Travis did their scenes like real troopers, resulting in very memorable and convincing performances.
Part of the strength of Open Water is that it presents the audience with a scenario which not only happened in real life, but was actually a situation experienced by countless people throughout history, including the famous USS Indianapolis story, so memorably told by the character of Quint in Jaws. The result is an unpleasant but rather memorable film.
The low budget guaranteed that Open Water would, if picked by a serious distributor, turn a major profit, and most of the reviews were also very favourable. Although Kentis failed to repeat the success of Open Water in his later career, his 2003 film received two sequels that had very little to do with the original or the basic premise – 2006's Open Water 2: Adrift and 2008's Open Water 3: Cage Dive.
RATING: 7/10 (++)
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