Open Water DVD

I agree with ya Floyd ... I didn't get a chance to see OPEN WATER in the theater, and just tonight I watched it ....

It wasn't until we got out into the ocean that I felt the "indie" elements ( low budget, simple camera etc ) start work for the film ...... The first 20 minutes were excruciatingly bad, and for those first 15 - 20 minutes, the minimal thing the filmmakers had going was really working against the film ...

I love the sea, and I love when a film takes its characters and isolates them somewhere ( BLAIR WITCH, ALIVE, THE THING, BATTLE ROYALE, DAWN/NIGHT, etc ) so my interest perked up once the 2 were left out there, however, the tension I felt was akin to that of a camera peeking over the edge of a tall building: it wasn't the characters I felt emotion for, it was just the fact that I started thinking about being stranded ........

For what it was, OPEN WATER was a worthwhile piece of low-budget filmmaking, but I am not going to fawn all over it ......

Tell me something about this movie, I was kind of half watching it last night (was distracted)

SPOILERS

so basically, the guy dies from bloodloss after the shark bite, she lets his corpse drift off, and then she sees a whole bunch of sharks, and either gives herself to them or says fuck it and decides to drown (it's hard to tell which)

is this correct?

---SPOILERS---







Yeah she basically gives into despair just as the rescue effort starts to get a full head of steam. She'd have probably been found if she'd held on a liittle longer. I loved the ending to this movie. It's probably my favorite thing about the film. It goes against the Hollywood grain.

That and the gratuitous titty shots in the beginning of the movie. They need to bring back nudity in more horror movies.

I love you Eye, and I want to have your babies......... which would be quite a task considering I'm a married heterosexual male. I agree with you 100% on both the (unexpected, at least to me) bleakness of the ending of the film and the titty shots early on. Those were natural, big ole non silicone ones also, which is always nice.

It seems that when I read a post and choose to reply, I'm always arguing one point or another, but not on this reply. I feel the movie failed at certain times (when compared to its' potential) with the dread of what might be hanging out below the water line. I actually think the skinny dipping scene at the beginning of JAWS and even the rip off of the same scene in PIRANHA hit that dread point more effectively than this movie did most of the times. I watched it on Sunday night on DVD for the first time, and I'll admit, I found the main characters yuppyish and not entirely likable to begin with, then I was just anxious to see how they manage to keep a film interesting with two people floating in the water for 45 minutes or whatever it was. It did keep my attention. In a big way. At the end of the film, I was PISSED OFF for 2 seconds (my wife was pissed for much longer), but then the 'aftertaste' of the movie kicked in and I have to say I not only liked it but it's encroaching on the "loved it" territory. Is it something I'll put in when buddies come over with a couple cases of beer? Hell no, but it affected me, and I'm still thinking about the haunting aspect of that ending as I'm writing this.

Ok, maybe I will argue about something in this thread. Heck, at least I'm consistant! Some of these posts have said things like "I knew it was an indie film, therefore.........", "I didn't expect much out of it because it was an "indie film" etc. etc. I'd like to define indie films: Movies made outside the Hollywood (or growing Florida) studio systems. They are often less commercial than studio films, but at the same time, they are often less formulaic, and made for the passion of getting that story out there rather than to make a ga-jillion dollars. For those that look at indie films with a negative preconception, I'd like to list a few indie films:
THE FLY, DEAD ALIVE, SUSPIRIA, AUDITION, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD, HALLOWEEN, HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, VIDEODROME, eXistenZ, SCANNERS, THE NAKED LUNCH, DRUGSTORE COWBOY, SESSION 9, DAY OF THE DEAD, THE CONVENT ( I love this silly movie, see it if you haven't yet had the pleasure), THE HILLS HAVE EYES, BLACK SABBATH, Last House on the Left, GO ASK ALICE, BLACK CHRISTMAS, TEXAS ChAINSAW MASSACRE, and many more that can't be paid for right now by the remaining currency of my mind the list goes on and on. Being an indie film just means it was made by someone who forewent the usually studio tampering to make what they wanted to make. To borrow a quote I loved from South Park, indie films aren't all about "GAY COWBOYS EATING PUDDING" .

I found both the main characters extremely annoying. To the point where I could barely pay attention to what was going on.

Same here, though I thought the ABSOLUTE bleakness of the ending served such a powerful impact that it actually saved the movie for me. Heck yeah, it could've been loads better, but I still really liked it. I agree though, with both you and Werewolf Girl, in that I didn't particularly give a damn about the characters themselves. I wouldn't like those guys if I met them at a party. They really weren't fully fleshed out. All you knew about them in the end that they were career driven, bickering yuppies......who happened to get left behind on a dive and end up floating in shark infested waters. I do think the emotional impact of the movie would have been far greater if I actually liked or at least fully knew the characters. I do think it's quite a feat of film making to devote such a massive amount of time with the characters floating in the ocean blue and keep it interesting. First and formost, I looooooooved the ending. Didn't care about the characters, but was enamored with the way it played out.

I thought that the film was great and I loved the way that they handled the characters. Some people are like that and I totally bought into it. I find this whole film inspirational as a filmmaker. If you have the dvd, they have a section on it about the making of the film. Concidering it was shot by 2 people over a period of 2 1/2 years is really great.

Awful. How many times can I see a lizard blink? And by the by, I doubt people leave all their equipment on their boats overnight.

It is quite a feat of Indie Filmmaking, I'll give them that. And the way the story played out had a certain charm to it. I mean, it would be easy to get bored with a movie that is about two people floating around in the ocean occasionally getting attacked by fish, but they managed to always keep it interesting and keep some level of tension alive. My one complaint is the annoying yuppie main characters, if they had been better fleshed out and easier to identify with this movie could have been really scary.

Am I the only one that really like this. Maybe it is just because I'm afraid of sharks and the ocean in general but this really got to me. Especially the thunderstorm scene. That, for me, was one of the most suspensful scenes in a movie this year. Yeah, and I thought the ending was really good too.

The term "indie" has sorta strayed from its roots ( independent ) over time ... Personally, I don't really think "indie" films have internationally recognized actors, and as an example, I don't consider DAWN OF THE DEAD an independant film considering George Romero put in a fraction of what Argento and his backers contributed to the film ... It was like $25,000 compared to $1,000,000 or thereabouts .... Low budget yes, but not independent ....

Also, as in the case with OPEN WATER , a film without a crew ( in which the husband and wife team are doing the filming ) is different than your average low budget film .....

Still, effect is effect ... and OPEN WATER didn't really do it for me, regardless of how it got there ....