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Open Water
(2003)
Dir. Chris Kentis
Open Water has one of the creepiest trailers I’ve ever seen. Everyone has their issues; one of mine: the ocean. Looking at it’s fine, but being in it? No thanks. I’m the chick in the pool beside the beach, but only after a thorough scan for displaced animal life. It could have been that school of fish that attacked my toes in the Bahamas--granted they were harmless--but in my head, I was reliving the lil’ campers river nightmare from Piranha. I stood there screaming until my brother carried me to the sand, where I sat for the rest of the vacation. Or maybe it was when I went jet skiing in the Atlantic while on the rag. Being too embarrassed to explain why I didn’t want to participate in the excursion I had instigated a few days earlier (pre-riding the red pony), I just tooled around replaying scenes from Jaws in my mind, convinced I was chumming the sea, and about to became a statistic. Going back even further, to the poolside summer after 3rd grade, when some asshole decided to flirt with me by holding me under until I had no choice but to inhale– peaceful way to die… my ass. Then throw in a viscous animal attack? I’ll take my chances inland.
The flick was a lot less traumatizing than the spine-chilling preview, but my experience was tainted by the row of overly enthusiastic moms in front of me. On a ‘girls night out’, they collectively felt the need to narrate the entire film for the rest of us as if we were dumb and blind. The simple premise of 2 scuba divers abandoned in the middle of nowhere, leaves little room for surprises (but apparently nobody told the ‘girls’ this). However the anti-Hollywood simplicity of the terror was quite refreshing. Sure, the Sixth Sense guy could have put in some more scare-the-hell out of you editing tricks; but I sort of liked the numbing reality shock thing. What can you do at that point but shit your wetsuit, float around and cry? No sense in throwing in shots from 42 underwater cameras, because all you’re gonna see, if you’re lucky, is the fin coming for you. If you’re expecting some ocean adventure film, don’t bother, but if watching a home video of a shark attack appeals to the voyeur in you, then jump on in; the water’s fine.
More horrifying than the premise of the movie was reading about how it was made. They really dumped those two poor saps out in the middle of the deep blue sea as ‘wranglers’ threw bloodied bits of fish scraps around them to get the carnivores to circle. That’s a rough way to get a SAG card. But don’t worry, the producer said this particular shark population (I’m sure they presented ID’s during the casting call) are accustomed to divers being in the water, she adds, "its sort of like working with pigeons." Uhmmmm right, and Roy Horn was just playing around with a really big kitten.
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