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23
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34
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60
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46
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78
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55
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69
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47
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86
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30
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83
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45
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96
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88
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71
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67
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Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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89
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81
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63
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73
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xx
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74
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94
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29
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16
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75
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83
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61
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42
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70
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46
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19
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41
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66
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80
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83
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xx
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59
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67
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34
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62
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xx
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48
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xx
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54
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68
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44
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35
Play the Game
77
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
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76
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69
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79
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40
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77
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xx
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89
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55
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66
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67
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69
We Live in Public
64
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64
Where is Where?
xx
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74
Woman in Berlin, A
69
World's Greatest Dad
70
Yes Men Fix the World
69
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xx
You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Open Water

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 38 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 76 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Chris Kentis
Directed by: Chris Kentis
Release Date:
Theatrical: August 6, 2004
DVD: December 28, 2004
Running Time: 79 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for language and some nudity
Starring Blanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis, Saul Stein, and Estelle Lau
Based on true events, Open Water follows an American couple on an island holiday that turns into an ordeal when they are left behind on a scuba expedition.
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Without doubt one of the scariest, creepiest, gut-churningly unsettling pictures to come along in ages.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Worth a dozen "Blair Witch Projects," with much more harrowing psychology and pithy dialogue. It's a bone-chilling plunge into no-holds-barred storytelling.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer
The nagging desire to help these people underscores the involvement of the audience in this superbly told story. You can almost taste the saltwater, and the fear.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
In spirit, Open Water reduces us to children peering through our fingers, waiting for the horrid deliverance we're not quite sure we want to see.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
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. Open Water had that effect on me.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The ending -- a more devastating surprise than "The Village" could manage -- caps eighty sweat-job minutes of imaginative, jolting suspense.
Read Full Review >Premiere Aaron Hillis
Open Water may not be a pristine or complex suspense thriller, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anything else as terrifyingly potent in such a tiny package.
Read Full Review >Variety Ronnie Scheib
A tour-de-force thriller that deftly transforms its low-budget limitations into spectacular assets.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Rarely have the dangers of drifting apart been given such a visceral and genuinely upsetting emotional wallop.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Terrifying precisely because it doesn't go in for cheesy shock tactics and special effects. (Those sharks are REAL.)
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
A fascinating experiment in both filmmaking technology and narrative style, but one that can be counted a success only in limited ways.
Read Full Review >New York Post Megan Lehmann
While immersed in the horror of their plight, you might forget to breathe.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
There's more terror than entertainment here, though. I've seen a lot of movies in my life I couldn't wait to see end; this may be the first good one.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
The year's most unsettling movie experience - and in this case, that's a very good thing.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
It offers genuine scares and chills without the self-aware, packaged feel of many horror/thriller films.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Sid Smith
A slow drip, but one all the more intense for its Gothic minimalism and its underlying parable of naturalistic determinism: It's no fun to fool with Mother Nature.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
An expertly made suspense thriller based on an actual incident, but on a visceral level it's about as much fun as watching someone pull the wings off a butterfly.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Could develop a cult following. But it is hard to envision repeat viewings or any great number of people willing, even vicariously, to undergo the couple's ordeal.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Kentis and Lau succeed in doing what all filmmakers worth their salt strive to do: They make us care about their characters.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman
Open Water, which was made for $130,000 -- and seemingly without special-effects assistance -- proves you don't have to have a big budget to have an audience on the edge of its seat.
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Unlike "Jaws," Open Water isn't much for traditional popcorn-movie scares. Instead, the movie is more interested in depicting the gradual deterioration of its protagonists' sanity, and how that affects their relationship.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
The actors are unknowns, but Ryan does a lot with her little downturned mouth. There are as many shades of anxiety as there are shades of blue in the sea, and Ryan manages to find them all.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The movie is also banal in ways that are irritating and second-rate.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
The sharks are scary, and the ocean is vast and indifferent, but the most effective parts of Open Water, which is ultimately too modest to be very memorable, evoke a deeper terror, one that can chill even those viewers who would never dream of putting on a wet suit and jumping off a boat.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson
It's moderately compelling drama, but also fairly static stuff, image-wise.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Don R. Lewis
Every hour that ticks by your stomach drops a little more as the outlook becomes more bleak.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The film's dispassionate examination of the shifts in Susan and Daniel's relationship as they drift from irritation to barely suppressed panic is at least as nerve wracking.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White
By no means a good movie. Although based on a true story, the mathematical error that led to Daniel and Susan's predicament is handled with such dramatic slovenliness that the viewer is apt to be confused as to what actually happened.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
This is not to say that it is bad writing, shooting, or acting: It would need to be more ambitious to be bad. It is simply the most mundane sort of behavior presented in the most mundane sort of way.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Writer-director Chris Kentis has dreamed up an ingenious premise, but he botches its execution. Every once in a while, the film stumbles upon a twist that ratchets up the tension, but then haphazardly discards it.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
I longed for something - anything - unexpected to occur. What I wouldn't have given for Wilson, the "Cast Away" volleyball, to float past with his bloody "face" print grinning at the pair!
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Open Water is just one tedious scene stretched out to feature length. It's terrifying all right, but only for what it says about the extents to which a couple of hungry actors and a bullish director will go to turn themselves into overnight celebrities.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Ultimately, it's 79 minutes of footage of a pair of petty, pretty people freaking out over having to go to the bathroom in their wetsuits, and in the end you find yourself rooting for the sharks.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Dennis Lim
Open Water is simply a stunt--hopelessly literal-minded and cheap in every sense.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
These dramatic shortfalls make us merely worried that two human beings are in danger, but not two compelling souls. There's your missing ingredient, the human X-factor.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 3.9 (out of 10) based on 76 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jojo D gave it a4:
It was slow until they became stranded. That's when we got to see the dynamics of their relationship, It kept getting better until it sank like a stone at the end.
Keenan S gave it a10:
This film was an amazing and sublime experience. This film was a harrowing experience that is one of the most memorable and best films I've ever seen, despite what some of these users have to say about it. This film felt real, and you're left guessing what will happen next. Sorry folks, but I loved this film, and I support the opinions of the critics this time. One of the best indie films out there, no doubt.
Stan S gave it a0:
I understand that i probably am missing the point of this movie, but to me it was simply a boring movie. I don't understand am i supposed to be afraid am i supposed to wonder what happens next i don't know all i was thinking of is when will it end.
retroboy gave it a0:
This was not stuped but boring this was the big ghahona of crapy story lines this was sooo boring this is ther CRAPEST MOVE EVER.
Rochelle Z gave it an8:
I think it was very well done.
Tom M. gave it a9:
I've always believed that after reaching a certain age or level of maturity, the thriller-chiller genre becomes tired and contrived for most of us, monotonously offering the movie-goer the same old wine in the same old bottle. Not this one! "Open Water" delivers big time. It is genuinely scary and captivating, especially when one discovers that the film is based on an actual occurrence. Not only that, the soundtrack is also intriguing, to say the least.
L.T. Chen gave it a2:
I can't believe the critics' rave reviews! Yeah, it was free of the usual Hollywood gimmicks; yeah it puts you right in the flippers of the doomed swimmers; yeah it was realistic. But it has ZERO story. Films shouldn't be realistic just to be realistic. Films tell stories. There was nothing in this film I couldn't imagine in my own head or read in a paragraph.
