“Open Water 2,” huh? Given that sharks ate the main characters in the original film, one could presume that the new movie must revolve around the tour boat company who left them to die in shark-infected waters. (“Omigod, you left another couple out there? No way! Dude, seriously, we are so going out of business this time!”) But, alas, that isn’t the case. And just in case you’re hoping that either the parents or siblings of the couple from “Open Water” are now on a quest to track down the guilty sharks and avenge the deaths of their family members, sorry, the phrase “this time, it’s personal” doesn’t apply here, either.
That’s right: welcome to another sequel that has virtually nothing in common with its predecessor, except a very general concept.
This time, we’re not just dealing with one guy, one girl and a whole mess of sharks. No, my friend, the ante has been upped and then some: we get six adults and a baby on a boat, heading to the middle of the ocean, destined to meet with a whole mess of trouble. Unfortunately, 10 minutes into the proceedings, you’re already splitting your time between rooting for the sharks and wondering if it’s wrong that the only reason you want to keep watching is to see if the baby gets eaten. Fortunately, the latter concern becomes moot when the baby takes a nap and the six dumb-asses go swimming, quickly realizing that there’s no ladder to climb back onto the boat. Okay, fine, so the baby’s mother was actually thrown in by one of her dumb-ass friends. Making this clarification changes very little, because there are plenty of other reasons to presume that every one of these people is extremely stupid.
Yes, even Mama.
They yell a great deal, generally lowering their voices only long enough to make poorly conceived attempts at rescuing themselves, such as fashioning a makeshift rope out of their bathing suits, then having the heaviest member of their party attempt to climb it. They’re so annoyingly dumb you’ll quickly find your attention wandering away from the screen as you try to work out how you would get yourself out of the situation that the characters are in. Perhaps it will occur to you, as it did to this writer, that the strongest person in your party could use his hands to springboard the lightest person upwards to grab the railing — surely that’d be worth a shot, wouldn’t you think? Go ahead, start making your own list of possible solutions! Soon, you’ll be so caught up in formulating your own plan that, if you’re really lucky, you won’t notice that there is not a single goddamned shark to be found anywhere within “Open Water 2.” Don’t view this as a spoiler, view it as Bullz-Eye.com doing its part to keep your blood pressure down. After all, we had to sit through all 95 minutes of this stinker to discover that there weren’t any sharks. We’re saving you the time, trouble and cost of a rental by assuring you there’s absolutely no reason to waste your time on this flick.
And, for the record, there’s also no reason to lay blame on Chris Kentis, the man who wrote and directed the original “Open Water.” His name’s nowhere to be found in the credits of “Open Water 2” and, my God, given how it turned out, he’s gotta be downright ecstatic about that.
1 / 5 Stars
Starring: Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight, Jr., Niklaus Lange, Ali Hillis, Cameron Richardson, Eric Dane
Director: Hans Horn
DVD Review:
There’s just one: a documentary on the making of the film. We have not watched it, but we presume that it basically just involves the director saying, “Um, well, we rented a boat, put it in the water, and, uh, yeah, that’s about it, really. I mean, hey, it’s not like we had to hire a shark wrangler, right?”
