Open Water, a horribly horrible peice of smelly shit.
75 minutes of hoping people will die, its an interesting thought. I have not once in my life HOPED that someone would die, even when I watch movies I think to myself, something bad is going to happen to him, not "I hope in the next ten minutes he will be dead." But, just to let you know my wish came true, they both die.
If you don't know the premise, Dude and Wife go on vacation because of their hectic work schedule and how over worked they are. The go to paradise and go SCUBA diving. They feel so experienced that they don't care what happens. When they surface the boat is gone. "How did the boat leave without two divers," you ask?
Well, let me tell you. The guide counts everyone before anyone goes down. There are 20 people. The guide then uses a tally system as people come up to account for everyone. One man, who never went down to begin with, goes down later with another man who has already been marked off on the tally. When they come up, they are marked off again. While the logic of this mans counting seemed crazy to me, I accepted it. But then he counted everyone on the boat before they left again. He could not have come up with twenty and therefore the screenwriter should have left this out.
Speaking of the screenwriter, I am not sure if there was one. And if there was, he didn't write a whole lot. As you will notice in the second paragraph, I wrote the word work twice in one sentence. That is because that is how developed the characters were. Actually, I probably gave you more character development in that sentence than there was in the entire movie. The viewer cannot have any kind of connection to the characters...
except in one scene.
The set up:
They have been alone in the ocean for a while, and they haven't been talking.
The dialogue:
"I can't believe were even in this situation, but not only are we in it, we paid them to put us in it."
I feel this is where the audience connects the most. At least for me I had a direct connection with that character at that very moment. I felt exactly the same way.
Now I am left to ask myself why a studio would have picked this up. There were approximately 30 people in the small theatre where I saw it, and no one liked it. I am going after two friends that suggested it, and I am now contemplating what could have made the movie better.
The list so far:
Lightsabers
More expedited deaths
Acting
I am sure I will think of more throughout the day.