''Open Water'' is a 2003 American

survival Survival, or the act of surviving, is the propensity of something to continue existing, particularly when this is done despite conditions that might kill or destroy it. The concept can be applied to humans and other living things (or, hypotheti ...

horror

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...

. The story concerns an American couple who go

scuba diving Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chris ...

while on vacation, only to find themselves stranded miles from shore in shark-filled waters when the crew of their boat accidentally leaves them behind. The film is loosely based on the true story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who in 1998 went out with a

group, Outer Edge Dive Company, on the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

, and were accidentally left behind because the dive-boat crew failed to take an accurate headcount. The film was financed by the husband and wife team of writer/director

Chris Kentis Chris Kentis is an American film director and screenwriter. Career Kentis is known for directing such films as ''Grind A blade's grind is its cross-sectional shape in a plane normal to the edge. Grind differs from blade profile, whi ...

and producer

Laura Lau Laura Lau (; born March 31, 1963) is an American writer, director, and producer, perhaps best known as the writer of the films '' Open Water'' (2005) and '' Silent House'' (2011), the latter of which she co-directed with Chris Kentis. Biograph ...

, both avid scuba divers. It cost $120,000 to make and was bought by

Lions Gate Entertainment Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, doing business as Lionsgate, is a Canadian-American entertainment company. It was formed by Frank Giustra on July 10, 1997, domiciled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is currently headquartered in ...

for $2.5 million after its screening at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

. Lions Gate spent a further $8 million on distribution and marketing. The film ultimately grossed $55.5 million worldwide (including $30 million from the North American box office alone). Before filming began, the Lonergans' experience was re-created for an episode of ABC's ''

20/20 Visual acuity (VA) commonly refers to the clarity of vision, but technically rates an examinee's ability to recognize small details with precision. Visual acuity is dependent on optical and neural factors, i.e. (1) the sharpness of the retinal ...

'', and the segment was repeated after the release of ''Open Water''. Clips from the film were also featured on NBC in "Troubled Waters", a ''

Dateline A dateline is a brief piece of text included in news articles that describes where and when the story was written or filed, though the date is often omitted. In the case of articles reprinted from wire services, the distributing organization is ...

'' episode (July 7, 2008) with

Matt Lauer Matthew Todd Lauer (; born December 30, 1957) is an American former television news personality, best known for his work with NBC News. After serving as a local news personality in New York City on WNBC, his first national exposure was as the ne ...

interviewing two professional divers, Richard Neely and Ally Dalton, who were left adrift at the Great Barrier Reef by a dive boat on May 21, 2008.

Plot

Daniel Kintner and Susan Watkins are frustrated that their hard-working lives do not allow them to spend much time together. They decide to go on a

scuba-diving Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for " Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chri ...

vacation to help improve their relationship. On their second day, they join a group scuba dive. A head count is taken and the passenger total is recorded as 20. Daniel and Susan decide to separate briefly from the group while underwater. Half an hour later, the group returns to the boat; two members of the group are inadvertently counted twice, so the dive master thinks that everyone is back on board and the boat leaves the site. However, Daniel and Susan are still underwater, unaware that the others have returned to shore. When they resurface, the boat has gone. They believe that the group will soon return to recover them. Stranded at sea, it slowly dawns on Daniel and Susan that their boat is not coming back for them. They bicker, battle bouts of hunger and mental exhaustion and realize that they have probably drifted far from the dive site. They also realize that

shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimo ...

s have been circling them below the surface. Soon,

jellyfish Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbrella- ...

appear, stinging them both, while sharks come in close. Susan receives a small shark bite on the leg, but does not immediately realize it. Daniel goes under and discovers a small fish feeding on the exposed flesh of her bite wound. Later, a shark bites Daniel and the wound begins to bleed profusely. Susan removes her weight belt and uses it to apply pressure to Daniel's wound, but he appears to go into shock. After night falls, sharks return and attack Daniel during a storm, killing him. The next morning, Daniel and Susan's belongings are finally noticed on the boat by a crew member and he realizes that they must have been left at the dive site. A massive search for the couple begins immediately. Susan realizes that Daniel is dead and releases him into the water, where sharks pull him down in a feeding frenzy. After putting on her mask, she looks beneath the surface and sees several large sharks now circling her. Susan looks around one last time for any sign of coming rescue. Seeing none, she removes her scuba gear and goes underwater to drown before the sharks can attack. Elsewhere, a fishing crew cut open a newly caught shark's stomach, finding a diving camera (apparently that of Daniel and Susan). One of the fishermen asks offhandedly to another, "Wonder if it works?"

Cast

Blanchard Ryan Susan Blanchard Ryan (born January 12, 1967) is an American actress. After working in MTV and other minor parts on television and independent film, she went on to star in the 2003 film '' Open Water'', for which she won the 2004 Saturn Award ...

as Susan Watkins *

Daniel Travis Daniel Travis (born March 10, 1968) is an American actor. Travis was born and raised in Clarkston, Michigan. He received a BFA in theater from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He went on to receive an MFA at The Mason Gross School of the Arts ...

as Daniel Kintner * Saul Stein as Seth * Michael E. Williamson as Davis * Cristina Zenato as Linda * John Charles as Junior * Estelle Lau as Affected-Ear Diver

Production

The filmmakers used live sharks, as opposed to the mechanical ones used in ''

Jaws Jaws or Jaw may refer to: Anatomy * Jaw, an opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth ** Mandible, the lower jaw Arts, entertainment, and media * Jaws (James Bond), a character in ''The Spy Who Loved Me'' and ''Moonraker'' * ...

'' or the computer-generated fish in '' Deep Blue Sea''. The film strives for authentic shark behavior, shunning the stereotypical exaggerated shark behavior typical of many films. The movie was shot on

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

. As noted above, the real-life events that inspired this story took place in the southern

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, and this film moves the location to the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

, being filmed in the

Bahamas The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to ...

, the

United States Virgin Islands The United States Virgin Islands,. Also called the ''American Virgin Islands'' and the ''U.S. Virgin Islands''. officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of Caribbean islands and an unincorporated and organized territory ...

, the

Grenadines The Grenadines is a chain of small islands that lie on a line between the larger islands of Saint Vincent and Grenada in the Lesser Antilles. Nine are inhabited and open to the public (or ten, if the offshore island of Young Island is counted): ...

, and

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. During the audition, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau made it clear to Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis they would be working with real sharks in the film and that it was non-negotiable. "So I was like 'okay, that's fine' and I hadn't been offered the part or anything yet, and then when I was offered the part, that had already been negotiated," said Blanchard.

Reception

''Open Water'' received mostly positive reviews. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 196 reviews with an average rating of 6.57/10. The consensus reads: "A low budget thriller with some intense moments." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film holds a score of 63 out of 100, based on reviews from 38 critics' reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Most critics praised the film for its intensity and minimalist filmmaking, while it was not well received by the audience. Writing in the ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...

'',

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

praised the film highly: "Rarely, but sometimes, a movie can have an actual physical effect on you. It gets under your defenses and sidesteps the 'it's only a movie' reflex and creates a visceral feeling that might as well be real". In a much less favorable review, A. O. Scott in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' lamented that it "succeeds in mobilizing the audience's dread, but it fails to make us care as much as we should about the fate of its heroes".

Box office

''Open Water'' was made for a budget recorded by

Box Office Mojo Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb, which itself is owned by Amazon. History Brandon Gray began ...

as $120,000, grossed $1 million in 47 theaters on its opening weekend and made a lifetime gross of $55 million.Open Water statistics at Boxofficemojo.com
''

Awards and nominations

Sequels

In 2006, a film marketed as a sequel titled '' Open Water 2: Adrift'' was released, although its plot is unrelated to ''Open Water''. A third film in the series titled, '' Open Water 3: Cage Dive'' was released in 2017, following the first film's plot of being a survival shark film, although unrelated in continuity.

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Open Water (Film) 2003 films 2003 horror films Sea adventure films 2003 independent films 2000s horror thriller films 2003 psychological thriller films 2000s thriller films American psychological thriller films American survival films 2000s English-language films Films about shark attacks Films about castaways Thriller films based on actual events Films about survivors of seafaring accidents or incidents Films about sharks Films shot in the Bahamas Films shot in the United States Virgin Islands American independent films Lionsgate films Adventure horror films American natural horror films American psychological horror films Films scored by Graeme Revell Films directed by Chris Kentis 2000s American films