ComplainerMan

SPOILER ALERT

Our choice for movie night, based on a hasty trip to the library with a crowded DVD section was this: The Cave, Open Water and Three. Open Water looked to be the most promising. We’ll see how good that choice was if we have time to watch the other two. It certainly isn’t a shoe in.

The cinematography looks like they were going for a “Blair Witch” in the ocean, but didn’t quite pull it off. At first you just notice that it looks like shoddy equipment/camera work, but later you forget it as it blends in with the shoddy everything-else.

The acting and or directing is very uneven, making some scenes confusing. For instance, after some brief nudity and a sex scene false start, there is an abrupt transition to the male actor squatting on the bed (suddenly in underwear – thank god), holding on to something and keeping very still. The female actor wakes up and man dives at the wall, apparently trying to swat a bug. Halfway into the movie I thought back – oh yeah, maybe that was supposed to be funny. It was odd.

The uneven acting kicks in when the couple gets stranded in the middle of the ocean. Panicking, fighting, crying, being scared by sharks – the emotions don’t really build up in a dramatic way. They just end up in a kind of terror malaise. Finally, when the man dies from a shark bite, and the woman is swimming with the body, it’s not obvious by her acting that he is dead. She could just still be annoyed at his whining. When she pushes him away, and he goes into the dead man float, then you know. His body being jerked about as it is eaten by sharks is a nice touch.

In the end, I did get a satisfyingly creepy feeling that they both had died. As I watched I had assumed that at least one would be rescued. Being based on actual events you would think that at least some of the plot was real-life. I guess “two tourists left out in the ocean, probably got eaten by sharks” is as good a basis for a movie as any.