Open Water 2 DVD Review

Normally I post movie reviews at my movie website, Movie-Source.com, but since Open Water 2: Adrift is a direct-to-DVD release and thus not deserving of a database entry, I'm posting my thoughts here instead:

Open Water 2: Adrift is a pretty stupid idea for a movie. After all, the first movie, which hardly deserved a theatrical release, was about two people who eventually die floating in the ocean. Sequel fodder, I think not. Nevertheless, the sequel is here, and while it certainly deserves its direct-to-DVD release, it shows that given a slightly better screenplay and a completely different title, it could have been something.

This time around, the movie focuses on a group of three couples and a baby who go yachting in Mexico. On one pleasant day they all decide to go swimming, but forget to do one simple thing: drop the ladder. With the hull of the boat too high to climb, the six find themselves stranded only ten feet from safety but unable to attain it. As tempers flare and the blame game beginnings, they struggle to stay afloat.

Open Water 2 has a few things going for it. The concept is pretty good and believable at that. The women are pretty nice to look at. The acting isn't as horrific as you'd expect, and some of the actors are recognizable. Stretches of the movie are well paced, and the ending is also quite exciting. Overall, Open Water 2 was much better than I expected, even if that isn't saying much.

On the other hand, the movie could have benefited from a slightly better script. While there are stretches that are perfectly fine, there are moments where the characters just do stupid stuff, or react in a way that isn't very believable, or get on topics that seem rather cheesy. There's a scene where a girl freaks out and starts screaming the Lord's prayer, which seemed rather out of character and rather sudden, and another where a man manages to get his cell phone off the deck of the boat, but frustrated that the signal is nearly non-existent, he throws it away. Who in their right, fucking mind would do that? In another scene, a man starts stabbing at the hull of the boat trying to create a foothold, but the boat's owner fights with him to stop and the end result is one of the characters getting stabbed to death. Come on.

Also, I don't understand why the three men didn't attempt to combine their force to throw one of the women toward the deck. Perhaps that would have been an easy-out to this dilemma, which would have caused the movie to end abruptly.

Open Water 2 is not the disaster you'd expect it to be, but it isn't anything special, either. Compared to the original, the movie does offer some more interesting dynamics as there are more characters to share the weight of the story, but also lacks the tension that made the first one halfway watch-able. If you have nothing better to do, you could do worse, but of course this is not one you'll be flying to the video store to see.