Friday, February 29, 2008

Open Water 2: Adrift Review


I absolutely loved the first Open Water. I thought it did a wonderful job of playing on our natural fear of sharks in a creative, immediate and chilling manner. It was bolstered by decent writing and by a sharp focus on just two characters. Open Water 2, on the other hand, is pretty damn putrid. While it boasts more 'known' actors (Eric Dane from Grey's Anatomy, Richard Speight from Jericho, Cameron Richardson from Alvin and the Chipmunks) the cast here actually brings much less to the table. Rather than playing rounded full characters having six actors forces each of them into the typical horror movie character classes. In fairness both Susan May Pratt and Richard Speight give fairly decent performances in these crappy roles. Cameron Richardson's 'acting' is, I'll be nice about it, not good. The rest of the cast is relatively poor as well. The film's biggest problem, I think, can be found in it's subtitle: adrift. There is no compelling interest to move the story forward. Unlike the first film where the coming of the sharks kept the tension up, here it's a vague notion of drowning and the characters' own stupidity that are meant to enthrall us. It's unbelievable to me that they made a second Open Water movie without a single shark. I really can't recommend this to much of anyone.

Overall Score: 3/10

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