Kim Gentes

Excellent-- must see!

You are an overworked, over stressed yuppie couple. You take a nice relaxing vacation to an island paradise. The highlight of the trip is a group excursion to a nearby ocean reef, where both of you will use your scuba experience to enjoy an exploratory dive. Its just the rest and relaxation you have needed from a hectic world. But when you come up from the water, the excursion group is gone , and so is the boat. You are left in open water. This is the premise of the new movie from director Chris Kentis, Open Water. You might be tempted to look for a comparison to the epic "Jaws" trilogies of the 70's but if you did so, you would find no similarities at all, save for the dreaded sharks. What's more, Open Water is based on "true events". The main points of the story are taken from the real lives of Daniel and Susan, an American couple. The movie starts off with flashes of footage from both cinematic and handi-cam captured scenes. You are brought into the film by its nuances of "home video" flavor, but you are kept confident by the returns to cinematic shots. Then the plot starts to unfold. What follows is the most riveting examination of human character in crisis that has been placed on film in recent history. The terror of this film is not so much in the biting, taunting and evil of the sharks at their heals. The real terror here is the horrible tearing of the human soul as fear and doubt bites its way through the couple, driving them into a roller coaster of some of the most honest dialog on film. While shark fright is there, this movie is really about relationships and what is at the core of them. The ending is simply the coup-de-grace of Open Water- startling, while remaining consistent with the plot. You won't leave without a gut wrenching sense of that same fear and doubt gnawing on your own psyche. This is NOT a movie for the kids, and unless you want to test your relationship, not a feel-good "date" movie either. This movie works at every level because you cannot help but sympathize with these characters, not because of their emotional likeability, but because they are so precisely human. You will be drawn in, and you will get wounded, just like Daniel and Susan. Are you ready to dive into Open Water?

Rated R for some language and brief nudity.