Open Water
Encyclopedia
Open Water is a 2003 horror film
loosely based on the true story of an American couple, Tom and Eileen Lonergan
, who in 1998 went out with a scuba diving
group, Outer Edge Dive Company, on the Great Barrier Reef
, and were accidentally left behind because the dive-boat crew failed to take an accurate headcount.
The film was financed by writer/director Chris Kentis and his wife, producer Laura Lau, both avid scuba divers. The film cost $500,000 to make and was bought by Lions Gate Entertainment
for $2.5 million after its screening at the Sundance Film Festival
. Lions Gate spent a further $8 million on distribution and marketing. The film ultimately grossed $55 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, 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 episode (July 7, 2008) with Matt Lauer
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.
) and Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) are an American couple frustrated that their hard-working lives don't allow them to spend much time together. They decide to pack up and head out on a scuba diving vacation to help relieve their everyday stress and improve their relationship. On their second day, Daniel and Susan join a group scuba
dive. Some on board their boat express nervousness about sharks, but the dive instructor dismisses the danger with a joke. A head count is taken, and the passenger total is recorded as 20. Daniel and Susan get in the water along with the rest of the divers.
One man, Seth, finds that he has forgotten his mask. He is upset over it and he gets verbally pushy with the boat's crew, but knowing the expectations of safe diving practices, he grudgingly remains on the boat. Daniel and Susan decide to separate briefly from the group while underwater. Meanwhile, a woman who is having problems with pressure equalization returns early to the boat with her partner. Including Seth, there are now three people back on the boat, and this is recorded by one of the crew as three "ticks" on their tally sheet. After this tally, Seth asks to borrow the mask of the woman who just returned, and he pressures the woman's reluctant dive partner into another dive with him.
The two men leave the boat, but the dive tally sheet is not changed because the crew member maintaining it did not see them depart. Half an hour later, the rest of the group begins returning to the boat, and during that period the crew member diligently increments the tally as each diver arrives back on board. Going by the tally sheet, the total now on board comes to 20, though in reality the accurate count is 18. Daniel and Susan, having separated from the group earlier, are still underwater and have not yet realized that the others have all returned. The boat leaves the site, and although several belongings of Daniel and Susan are sitting openly in the passenger area of the boat, most individuals in the dive group do not know others beyond their dive partners, so no one happens to associate the stored belongings of Daniel and Susan with their absence on the boat.
Not long after the boat leaves, Daniel and Susan return to the surface and look for it. They see a boat, presumably the dive boat, gradually receding away in the distance. They believe the group will return to recover them in reasonable time, as they assume someone on board the boat will notice their belongings. Stranded at sea, Daniel and Susan rehash a few old disputes, bicker about the wisdom of swimming for occasional boats seen in the distance, battle bouts of hunger and mental exhaustion, and later realize by looking down through the water while wearing their masks that they have likely drifted far from the dive site. In addition to the worry that their rescue may be growing less certain, they also realize that sharks have been circling them below the surface. Susan is worried about the sharks, but Daniel tries to calm her, saying, "Sharks are attracted to wounded fish," and concludes that they should try to stay calm and not splash around. Soon, jellyfish appear and sting Daniel and Susan, while several times sharks are coming in very close, seemingly trying to determine if the couple are viable prey. Susan receives a small bite on the leg from a shark, but doesn't immediately realize it. Daniel notices this as he goes under to check out the light "nipping" feeling she has. He sees that it is a small fish feeding on the exposed flesh of her bite wound, but he does not tell Susan that the wound is a shark bite. 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. He appears to begin to go into shock. Susan is now very afraid, telling him to "just keep breathing." The tight-fitting neoprene wetsuits are apparently keeping them from fully realizing they have been sustaining small bites. After night falls, during a strong storm, sharks return and attack Daniel again, killing him.
The next morning, the belongings of Daniel and Susan are finally noticed on the long-since-moored boat by an arriving member of its crew. He opens their duffel bag and finds their scuba certification cards with their photos on them, and suddenly he remembers the couple clearly and realizes they must have been left out at the dive site the previous day. A search for the couple is begun in earnest. Meanwhile Susan, having held on to Daniel through the night, realizes he is dead and releases him into the water, where sharks attack him in a feeding frenzy. Susan turns away from the lifeless bobbing movement of Daniel's floating body as the sharks pull him under. After putting on her goggles, she looks beneath the surface and sees several large sharks now circling her. One seems to dart in her direction. Susan looks around one last time for any sign of coming rescue, and seeing none, removes her scuba gear, pushes it away, removes her mask, and goes underwater to drown before the sharks can attack. After Susan slips below the water's surface, the film scene flashes elsewhere, revealing a fishing crew cutting open a newly-caught shark's abdomen and stomach, and finding a waterproof diving camera, ostensibly that of Daniel and Susan. One of the fishermen asks off-handedly to another, "Wonder if it works?"
Steve Lemme
of Broken Lizard
makes a cameo as a tourist on the scuba boat.
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. As noted above, the real-life events that inspired this story took place in the southern Pacific Ocean
, and this film moves the location to the Atlantic Ocean
, being filmed entirely in the Bahamas.
that killed 229,866 people. Lau and her daughter were trapped in a second-floor Internet cafe but escaped, as described in an AP story:
as $500,000, grossed $1 million in 47 theaters on its opening weekend and made a lifetime gross of $55 million. The film divided critics, however. Most praised it as an exercise in expertly minimalist filmmaking, but some critics found the film difficult to sit through. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times
, Roger Ebert
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.", but A. O. Scott
in The New York Times
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." The film has a 72% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes
.
in 2004 for her performance.
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
loosely based on the true story of an American couple, Tom and Eileen Lonergan
Tom and Eileen Lonergan
Thomas and Eileen Hains Lonergan, born 1964 and 1970, respectively, were a married couple from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States, who were mistakenly stranded in the Coral Sea on January 25, 1998, while SCUBA diving with a group of divers off of Australia's Great Barrier Reef...
, who in 1998 went out with a scuba diving
Scuba diving
Scuba diving is a form of underwater diving in which a diver uses a scuba set to breathe underwater....
group, Outer Edge Dive Company, on the Great Barrier Reef
Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is the world'slargest reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres over an area of approximately...
, and were accidentally left behind because the dive-boat crew failed to take an accurate headcount.
The film was financed by writer/director Chris Kentis and his wife, producer Laura Lau, both avid scuba divers. The film cost $500,000 to make and was bought by Lions Gate Entertainment
Lions Gate Entertainment
Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation is a North American entertainment company. The company was formed in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1997, and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California...
for $2.5 million after its screening at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. Lions Gate spent a further $8 million on distribution and marketing. The film ultimately grossed $55 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, 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 episode (July 7, 2008) with Matt Lauer
Matt Lauer
Matthew Todd "Matt" Lauer . is an American television journalist best known as the host of NBC's The Today Show since 1997. He was previously a news anchor in New York and a local talk-show host in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Richmond...
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 (Daniel TravisDaniel Travis
Daniel Travis 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 at Rutgers University...
) and Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) are an American couple frustrated that their hard-working lives don't allow them to spend much time together. They decide to pack up and head out on a scuba diving vacation to help relieve their everyday stress and improve their relationship. On their second day, Daniel and Susan join a group scuba
Scuba diving
Scuba diving is a form of underwater diving in which a diver uses a scuba set to breathe underwater....
dive. Some on board their boat express nervousness about sharks, but the dive instructor dismisses the danger with a joke. A head count is taken, and the passenger total is recorded as 20. Daniel and Susan get in the water along with the rest of the divers.
One man, Seth, finds that he has forgotten his mask. He is upset over it and he gets verbally pushy with the boat's crew, but knowing the expectations of safe diving practices, he grudgingly remains on the boat. Daniel and Susan decide to separate briefly from the group while underwater. Meanwhile, a woman who is having problems with pressure equalization returns early to the boat with her partner. Including Seth, there are now three people back on the boat, and this is recorded by one of the crew as three "ticks" on their tally sheet. After this tally, Seth asks to borrow the mask of the woman who just returned, and he pressures the woman's reluctant dive partner into another dive with him.
The two men leave the boat, but the dive tally sheet is not changed because the crew member maintaining it did not see them depart. Half an hour later, the rest of the group begins returning to the boat, and during that period the crew member diligently increments the tally as each diver arrives back on board. Going by the tally sheet, the total now on board comes to 20, though in reality the accurate count is 18. Daniel and Susan, having separated from the group earlier, are still underwater and have not yet realized that the others have all returned. The boat leaves the site, and although several belongings of Daniel and Susan are sitting openly in the passenger area of the boat, most individuals in the dive group do not know others beyond their dive partners, so no one happens to associate the stored belongings of Daniel and Susan with their absence on the boat.
Not long after the boat leaves, Daniel and Susan return to the surface and look for it. They see a boat, presumably the dive boat, gradually receding away in the distance. They believe the group will return to recover them in reasonable time, as they assume someone on board the boat will notice their belongings. Stranded at sea, Daniel and Susan rehash a few old disputes, bicker about the wisdom of swimming for occasional boats seen in the distance, battle bouts of hunger and mental exhaustion, and later realize by looking down through the water while wearing their masks that they have likely drifted far from the dive site. In addition to the worry that their rescue may be growing less certain, they also realize that sharks have been circling them below the surface. Susan is worried about the sharks, but Daniel tries to calm her, saying, "Sharks are attracted to wounded fish," and concludes that they should try to stay calm and not splash around. Soon, jellyfish appear and sting Daniel and Susan, while several times sharks are coming in very close, seemingly trying to determine if the couple are viable prey. Susan receives a small bite on the leg from a shark, but doesn't immediately realize it. Daniel notices this as he goes under to check out the light "nipping" feeling she has. He sees that it is a small fish feeding on the exposed flesh of her bite wound, but he does not tell Susan that the wound is a shark bite. 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. He appears to begin to go into shock. Susan is now very afraid, telling him to "just keep breathing." The tight-fitting neoprene wetsuits are apparently keeping them from fully realizing they have been sustaining small bites. After night falls, during a strong storm, sharks return and attack Daniel again, killing him.
The next morning, the belongings of Daniel and Susan are finally noticed on the long-since-moored boat by an arriving member of its crew. He opens their duffel bag and finds their scuba certification cards with their photos on them, and suddenly he remembers the couple clearly and realizes they must have been left out at the dive site the previous day. A search for the couple is begun in earnest. Meanwhile Susan, having held on to Daniel through the night, realizes he is dead and releases him into the water, where sharks attack him in a feeding frenzy. Susan turns away from the lifeless bobbing movement of Daniel's floating body as the sharks pull him under. After putting on her goggles, she looks beneath the surface and sees several large sharks now circling her. One seems to dart in her direction. Susan looks around one last time for any sign of coming rescue, and seeing none, removes her scuba gear, pushes it away, removes her mask, and goes underwater to drown before the sharks can attack. After Susan slips below the water's surface, the film scene flashes elsewhere, revealing a fishing crew cutting open a newly-caught shark's abdomen and stomach, and finding a waterproof diving camera, ostensibly that of Daniel and Susan. One of the fishermen asks off-handedly to another, "Wonder if it works?"
Cast
- Blanchard Ryan as Susan Watkins
- Daniel TravisDaniel TravisDaniel Travis 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 at Rutgers University...
as Daniel Kintner - Saul Stein as Seth
- Michael E. Williamson as Davis
- Cristina Zenato as Linda
- John Charles as Junior
Steve Lemme
Steve Lemme
Steven "Steve" Lemme is an American actor, writer, and producer, and one of the members of the Broken Lizard comedy group. He attended The Dalton School, a high school in New York, but after one year transferred to Fountain Valley School in Colorado, graduating in 1987. He attended Colgate...
of Broken Lizard
Broken Lizard
Broken Lizard is an American comedy troupe, consisting of five friends, best known for its films, including Super Troopers and Beerfest. Its five members are Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske. They collaborate on the screen-writing, acting and...
makes a cameo as a tourist on the scuba boat.
Production
The filmmakers used living sharks, as opposed to the mechanical ones used in Jaws or the computer-generatedComputer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
fish in Deep Blue Sea
Deep Blue Sea
Deep Blue Sea is a 1999 science fiction horror film that stars Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, LL Cool J, and Samuel L Jackson. The film was directed by Renny Harlin and was released in the United States on July 28, 1999.- Plot :...
. The film strives for authentic shark behavior
Ethology
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....
, shunning the stereotypical exaggerated shark behavior typical of many films. The movie was shot on digital video. As noted above, the real-life events that inspired this story took place in the southern Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
, and this film moves the location to the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
, being filmed entirely in the Bahamas.
Week of the DVD release
Three days after the DVD release of Open Water, filmmakers Chris Kentis, Laura Lau, and their seven-year-old daughter had their own encounter with ocean dangers in what the Associated Press called "a real-life version of their shark thriller Open Water." Kentis stated that the DVD release was "meaningless" in comparison with his nightmarish experience that same week. Vacationing in Thailand, Kentis and his family survived the tsunami2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on Sunday, December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The quake itself is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake...
that killed 229,866 people. Lau and her daughter were trapped in a second-floor Internet cafe but escaped, as described in an AP story:
Lau, 41, said she pulled about a half-dozen Swedish tourists to safety using a bamboo ladder before using it herself to escape from the cafe's balcony with Sabrina on her back. They reached Kentis by hiking in waist-deep water back to the hotel. The couple then hiked several miles into the mountains with their luggage because they were afraid another massive wave was coming. They took two minicabs to PhuketPhuket ProvincePhuket , formerly known as Thalang and, in Western sources, Junk Ceylon , is one of the southern provinces of Thailand...
's east coast, which Kentis said seemed almost unaffected by the tsunami. "When we got there, it was all people on yachts having a good time. It was just surreal," Kentis said. "Two hours later, our kids were swimming in this beautiful hotel pool and we're ordering food."
Reception
The film was made for a budget recorded by Box Office MojoBox Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is a website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. Brandon Gray started the site in 1999. In 2002, Gray partnered with Sean Saulsbury and they grew the site to nearly two million readers when, in July 2008, the company was purchased by Amazon.com through...
as $500,000, grossed $1 million in 47 theaters on its opening weekend and made a lifetime gross of $55 million. The film divided critics, however. Most praised it as an exercise in expertly minimalist filmmaking, but some critics found the film difficult to sit through. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
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.", but A. O. Scott
A. O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott, known as A. O. Scott , is an American journalist and critic. He is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with Manohla Dargis.-Background and education:...
in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
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." The film has a 72% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
Awards
Blanchard Ryan won a Saturn Award for Best ActressSaturn Award for Best Actress (Film)
The following are a list of Saturn Award winners for Best Actress :-References:*http://www.saturnawards.org/past.html#filmactress...
in 2004 for her performance.
Sequel
- In 2006, a sequel, Open Water 2: AdriftOpen Water 2: AdriftOpen Water 2: Adrift is a thriller filmed entirely in Malta, starring Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight, Jr., Niklaus Lange, Ali Hillis, Cameron Richardson and Eric Dane...
, was released, which also claimed to be based on a true story.