We’re starting 2018 off with a bang…or is it a whimper? Either way, there are sharks.
The Film:
Open Water 3: Cage Dive
The Premise:
A found footage shark movie about 3 annoying fucking assholes friends on a cage diving trip.
The Ramble:
After news that a cage diving trip has ended with a capsized boat and missing tourists, an experienced diver finds an underwater camera tucked away in a reef. With the SD card intact, he discovers footage of 3 friends who embarked on the cage diving trip. This is their story.
Jeff, Megan, and Josh are a close-knit group of friends with an adventurous spirit. After deciding to audition for a reality competition that seems to be in the vein of The Amazing Race, the friends plan the perfect trip to demonstrate their willingness to make poor decisions on camera: cage diving in Australia.
Look, I’ll be honest with you–these 3 characters are the most insufferable assholes I can think of in our recent viewing experiences. Jeff and Josh are supposedly bros for life, though Megan is in a serious relationship with Jeff but also having a fling with Josh. The two best bros are so interchangeable that I’m more annoyed Megan didn’t have an affair with someone more interesting than that the affair is breaking up the band.
Megan and Josh are stupid enough to continue their affair even with the knowledge they are being recorded constantly. To be fair, they’d probably be pretty good contenders for reality television. This leads to several awkward interactions as the two try to hide the evidence from Jeff, who obliviously plans to propose if the group makes it onto the show.
As planned, the 3 meet up with Jeff’s cousin, then go off to do some cage diving. If I had trouble relating to these characters before, they lose all semblance of humanity to me by voluntarily cage diving in the open ocean. Of course, things go horribly wrong when a sudden tidal wave capsizes the boat, leaving several passengers dead and our main 3 stranded.
It’s incredibly irritating to watch them squander every opportunity they have to save themselves and eventually turn on each other when Jeff learns the truth about Megan and Josh. Because, you know, when faced with the prospect of being stranded in shark-infested waters versus relationship drama, which one would be your top priority?
The Rating:
2/5 Pink Panther Heads
Oh my GOD, I hated our 3 protagonists and felt an amount of joy at their (spoiler/not really a spoiler) deaths that set off distant alarm bells in the back of my brain. What hath the Open Water franchise wrought???
I will admit the concept of being lost at sea taps into something deeply primal in my lizard brain, so there are legitimately horrifying moments in this film. Splashes, the shaky camera shots, and the seemingly endless water do make this unsettling to watch. At the same time, if it had been virtually anyone else in the water, I might have taken less sadistic glee in watching these fucking dickbags finally get torn into little pieces.
Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark this is not.
The Pink Panther Snipes Again 
Ha. You’ve nailed this so hard, they were awful humans. So terrible. With all the bro talk I genuinely thought they were brothers and shared a mom too. I couldn’t stand Megan of all of them and that terrible business in the boat with the flare, she showed zero remorse for burning a girl alive. Stupid stupid cow! Anyway, maybe not the best to start on, although very much a crappy movie and a fun one to review. Did you know there’s a second Open Water called Adrift? Bet you can’t guess what happens… xoxo
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I’ve become immune to bro talk, so I assumed they were just douchebags rather than actual brothers. However, they did seem dim enough for the real need to constantly remind themselves how they’re relayed to the people around them, so I could just as easily believe they actually were brothers.
I was so pissed about Megan and the flare–that was way worse than the stupid affair with Josh and literally no one cared about what happened to that girl. If anything, this film makes a strong case for natural selection.
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