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The Forgotten
This is the weekend they didn't play golf.

Starring: Blanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis, Saul Stein, Estelle Lau, Jon-Damon Charles
Director: Joseph Ruben
Screenwriter: Gerald Di Pego

Reviewed by Dawn Capp

What's the best way to beat Spielberg's thriller about a killer shark? Use real sharks, and lots of them. Open Water does just that, telling the story of two divers left behind in the middle of the ocean when their boat, overcrowded with co-divers, heads back to shore. In this low-budget thriller, Chris Kentis, who wrote and directed the film, used live sharks to swim with the two brave (and slightly crazy) actors. He hired shark expert Stuart Cove, who owns semi-trained sharks in the Bahamas, and made sure all the bull sharks, a naturally aggressive species, were well-fed.

If you can get past the low-budget look of the movie in the beginning and ignore the several out-of-focus scenes, this film will pull you right in and leave you feeling as though you're stranded in the middle of the ocean with the two hapless divers. With many scenes filmed level with the water's surface, viewers are immediately plunged into the action, seeing what the characters see -- miles of water, blue sky, and every so often, a shark fin...or five.

Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan, who respectively play Daniel and Susan, givecommendable performances as two terrified divers stranded in the open sea. However, they may not have been acting, considering they were, at all times when sharks were shown in the movie, actually in the water with the creatures and being told not to move too much and risk attracting the sharks while, on the other hand, contrarily being instructed not to move too little and chance one or more of the sharks mistaking them for wounded fish and deciding to take a chomp.

Despite a shaky start, with some shoddy directing, questionable acting, and a completely superfluous nude scene by Ryan that reinforced the Hollywood stereotype of encouraging female actors to bare it all while their male counterparts remain modestly covered, this 79-minute film is still worth the price of admission

In addition to its other flaws, the film could have benefited by more in-depth character development. As it stands, the audience is left wondering what exactly the Daniel and Susan do for a living and what has happened in their lives to make them so stressed they have taken a hurried and poorly-planned vacation. Still, the film makes up for its lack of character development by getting into the action relatively quickly, leaving no time for viewers to become bored.

Overall, Open Water is a solid film that does a respectable job of making the best of its low budget while portraying a remarkably realistic experience of two divers stranded afloat in ocean waters, trying their best to survive and desperately hoping for rescue.

Rating:

(3 out of 4 stars)

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