Open Water

[beekae]

I really dont know where to start with this film.

Its supposedly based on a young couple,left behind after a diving tour.As far as a true story,thats where it ends.

The suspense is well done,on a meagre budget and a digi camera.

BUT,the rest of the film(75%),is imagined with unknown actors acting poorly.

The ending is,well its just the ending,and leaves you thinking why you bothered.

Supposedly suits,scribbled words and abandoned equipment turned up after the event...this is never shown and makes the film even more disappointing.

Actually I find the film more disturbing than entertaining,poetic licence gone mad,and only a few years after the actual event.

4/10

[BadTaste]

i was afraid that was gonna happen :|

[darkstar]

yep it was far to slow nothing realy happns in it appart from he odd shark bumping into them

[cooler]

did anyone see the lady going to find her lead weights at the end ? or was she trying to hide from the plane

[Raptor]

The True Story Behind Disturbing 'Open Water' Movie

Powered by CDNN - CYBER DIVER News Network
by DAVID FICKLING

In 1998, Tom and Eileen Lonergan disappeared off the Great Barrier Reef after a diving company accidentally left them behind in shark-infested waters. Their bodies were never found. David Fickling reports on the true story behind a disturbing new film...



The sun is bright and hot as you break surface. You squint to see the outline of a boat. After 40 minutes of scuba diving you feel disoriented. You paddle round to see whether the boat is behind you, but there is nothing: just calm, blue ocean, stretching to the horizon.

Such is the scenario of Open Water, the surprise hit of this year's Sundance film festival, which has also met with rave reviews across the American movie press. Shot on handheld digital cameras with a shoestring budget, it depicts the disintegration of a happy American couple after they are abandoned in shark-infested seas off the Bahamas during a dive holiday.

Tom and Eileen Lonergan

The promotional material boasts that the film is "based on true events", but its makers are now parrying questions about exactly which true events are involved. Yet few doubt that the inspiration is the case of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, American tourists who disappeared off Australia's Great Barrier Reef on January 25, 1998. The couple had wound up in Australia after several years of travelling round the world. They had met and married at Louisiana State University, where Eileen had taken up scuba diving and persuaded Tom to join in her hobby. For two years they had taught for the Peace Corps in the Pacific island country of Tuvalu, before spending a further year in Fiji.

They were planning to travel round the world before heading home, but first the couple were determined to visit the Barrier Reef. In Port Douglas, an upmarket diving and sailing town towards the end of the road north through Queensland, they decided to take a day trip on a 26-passenger boat, the Outer Edge. For A$160, the five crew would take them for three dives on the ribbon reefs, a stack of broad shoals that run along the seaward ramparts of the Barrier Reef, 40 miles offshore. On their third dive, round about 3pm, they headed off together and were last spotted swimming calmly 12m down. When they came to the surface after less than an hour underwater, the Outer Edge had gone.

Being left behind on a dive is not an instant death sentence. Paul Lucas, a tourist from Leicester with less than 10 dives under his belt, survived for 40 hours in stormy seas in January 2000, after he was left behind by a dive boat in northern New South Wales. A diver is wearing an inflatable lifejacket and has the air to inflate it in a tank strapped to their back. The danger in the blazing heat of tropical Queensland is that, without fresh water, someone floating in the middle of the ocean may dehydrate long before help can arrive.

The day after the incident the Outer Edge brought another tour party to the area, and one diver found six dive weights resting on the bottom. Oblivious to what had happened the previous day, a crew member described the find as a bonus.

At that point Tom and Eileen might still have been alive just a few miles away, using the empty dive belt to bind themselves together. They certainly appear to have survived the night: several months later a fisherman 100 miles north of the site found a dive slate which records their thoughts as dawn broke that morning. In a wobbly scrawl faded by months in the water, Tom Lonergan had written: "[Mo]nday Jan 26; 1998 08am. To anyone [who] can help us: We have been abandoned on A[gin]court Reef by MV Outer Edge 25 Jan 98 3pm. Please help us [come] to rescue us before we die. Help!!!"

Other clues offered tantalising glimpses of what might have happened. A wetsuit of Eileen's size washed up in north Queensland in early February; scientists measuring the speed of barnacle growth on its zip estimated that it was lost on January 26. Tears in the material around the buttocks and armpit had apparently been caused by coral.

Inflatable dive jackets marked with Tom and Eileen's names were later washed ashore north of Port Douglas, along with their tanks - still buoyed up by a few remnants of air - and one of Eileen's fins. None showed any signs of the damage you would expect from a violent end, suggesting that the couple were not the victim of a shark attack, as the film suggests. Experts at the inquest speculated that, drifting helplessly back and forth on the tides in the building heat of the tropical sun, the couple may have been driven delirious by dehydration and have voluntarily struggled out of their cumbersome outfits. Without the buoyancy provided by their dive jackets and wetsuits, they would not have been able to tread water for long.

Publicity surrounding the case spelled disaster for the Queensland dive industry. Nearly 50,000 people work in Queensland's Barrier Reef tourist trade, which is worth A$4.3bn and hosts nearly 4m day trips every year. High-profile horror stories could irrevocably taint the image of local operators. Worse still, this had not been simply an unavoidable accident. Dive boat crews are meant to count every diver into and out of the water and then carry out a further count when the boat leaves the dive site, but somehow the Lonergans had slipped through the net.

Outer Edge skipper Jack Nairn said that he had ordered a crew member to carry out the count, and that the numbers had become confused because two passengers had jumped into the water halfway through. In any case, no one seems to have noticed that two sets of diving gear were missing as the boat steamed back to Port Douglas, nor was any alarm raised the following day when the Outer Edge returned to the same spot. It was only two days later, when Nairn found a bag containing the Lonergans' wallet and passports on the boat, that the alarm was raised. By that time, Tom and Eileen would probably already have died.



The industry's damage-control mechanism was desperate and unpleasant. Rumours started spreading - many of them put about by the Outer Edge's owner, Tom Colrain - that there was more to the Lonergans' case than met the eye. Melancholy passages in the diaries of Tom and Eileen were raised as evidence that they had committed suicide, that he had killed her in a murder-suicide, even that they had faked their own deaths and sped off to a new life in another boat supposedly spotted nearby. Sightings of the Lonergans began pouring in from all over Australia.

In the inquest and subsequent trial of Jack Nairn on manslaughter charges, the speculation reached fever pitch. "The defence attorney used these diaries to absolutely slander, to absolutely destroy these two people's reputations," says Eileen's father, John Hains, who travelled to Cairns for the hearing. "I was disappointed in the verdict [in which Jack Nairn was found not guilty of manslaughter]. I felt like the jury didn't believe that they were dead, and to me that was the essence of the trial, was to prove that they had died."

Six years on, the names of Tom and Eileen Lonergan are still those most likely to shut down a Cairns conversation, so the release and publicity surrounding Open Water is far from welcome. Jack Nairn still lives in the area despite losing his business as a result of the publicity and debts surrounding his trial. He initially refused to talk about the case, and would only discuss how the fallout from the case had affected him. "The reality of it is that the thing creates emotional turmoil for all of the people involved," he says. "It's incredibly unsettling and stressful for myself and my children, and for us it's a terrible thing that [Open Water] has been made. This is really very bad for the industry as a whole."

Nairn's concerns about the impact of the film on tourism are not surprising, given the Queensland dive industry's struggle to rebuild its squeaky-clean image in the wake of the Lonergans' deaths. In a check on 59 dive shops by Queensland health and safety inspectors in 2002, a total of 76 notices were issued for failure to do proper head counts, dive logs or lookouts - the main issues highlighted three years earlier in the Lonergan inquest.

Hains has no truck with the release of Open Water. "As far as the movie's concerned we're not interested. We won't see it," he says. Yet remarkably, he holds no grudge against the crew and passengers on the Outer Edge. "I don't have any hard feelings against anybody, because it was an accident," he says. His only disappointment is that among all the equipment washed up on the shores of north Queensland, there was never a trace of his daughter's body. "It leaves a big hole in you to lose your kid, that's part of your life. I wish they had found them, so we had something. I suppose we have the Great Barrier Reef. They're part of that."

[CzarJunkie]

I enjoyed this film, the actors were good for such a low budget movie and keeping the audience watching while the majority of the film was played out in one location with the same 2 actors is some going in this attention span challenged time we live in.

The dialogue was good, while the drama was believable and not over done like it could have been, the hopelessness of their plight came across very well, especially towards the end.

I think a lot of people used to seeing the main protaganists win out in the end will be left with a feeling theres unfinished business after seeing this movie, but it just goes to show how conditioned we've become to Hollywood's usual happy endings. This movie doesn't apologise for its morbid ending and it's quite a breath of fresh air to leave the comfort zone of Hollywood escapism.

A good movie, could have been a lot worse.

7/10

[cooler]

I find this film disturbing as to the young person who has not attempted the beautiful art of exploring the sea bed and reefs with scuba gear and seen the harmless wonders that are plentiful and gained the once in a lifetime experience of actually being up close and personal with a harmless black tipped reef shark would possibly avoid this exploration due to this film it was done in such a manner as to say that the possibility of this could still arise which as any diver would tell you that cowboys that do anything can and may cause loss of life not scuba diving


rating for film on reality i would give this film 5/10

on watchabilty 5/10

i personally find this film morbid and pointless and a little slow at times but as is said before the actual people this happened to i feel died needlessly

long live padi buddy system :thumbs

[daz73]

Watched this last night and although it was a bit slow i didnt mind it as the suspense was quite good.. I do not like open water anyways which added to the scare factor (for me anyway!) Morbid ending but like Blair Witch project which also was a budget film & ended badly(for the people in it..& one of the best ending i have seen in any film!) it was the only ending fitting for it...

film rating 6.5/10

Cooler - hope you remember this film when your scuba diving in the local canal!!!

hoping someone was going to make a film on the disaster many years ago which 300 guys fell into shark infested waters and only a handful got out.. quinn talked about it in jaws..also a true story

[cooler]

canals are too cold man head for the sun ,dive in the indian ocean and stroke one of these tame sharks in your chain mail suit

[/dev/null]

This is deffo got to be the worst film I have ever seen!
I know it's based on a true story, but 3/4 of it is just two people bobbing up and down in the sea!
Would not recommend watching at all - complete waste of time!!

1/10

[-G-Man-]

Having seen a documentry on the story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan (the people on which the film is based) I was well up for seeing this film.

But seeing that the story ended with them just both dying, when there is so much more to it then that (washed up wetsuits etc) i left the cinema wishing there was some way of recapturing the 80 minutes of my life i had just wasted.

Utter Crap.

2/10, and thats only because of the full on nudity.

[jw_2000_uk]

Having seen a documentry on the story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan (the people on which the film is based) I was well up for seeing this film.

But seeing that the story ended with them just both dying, when there is so much more to it then that (washed up wetsuits etc) i left the cinema wishing there was some way of recapturing the 80 minutes of my life i had just wasted.

Utter Crap.

2/10, and thats only because of the full on nudity.

Dito. It was so shit.prob one of the worst films ive seen,the only truth in it was they went on a boat and got wet.rest was all shit.

Its just selling a film with these words "BASED ON A TRUE STORY" thats why i thought it would be good, how wrong.


2/10 for the birds tits and minge. same as above. :thumbs

[biggy7]

if its a true story, and they both died, how the hell do they know what exaclty happend?

saw this aswell, they must of had a budget of about £10, im sure i could of filmesd it better with my sony DV CAM

if the gal wounded her leg, why the feck didnt she just lie on her back and stick her leg above the water, thus not attractiing the sharks.

they had a camera with them aswell why didnt they use the Flash on it to attract passing boats? :nowords:

i turned it off towards the end as it was boring me. way over hyped though, the trailor is better then the actual film

3/10

[daz73]

nice body on her though! :thumbs

[cooler]

yeah tasty !!!

[/dev/null]

if its a true story, and they both died, how the hell do they know what exaclty happend?

I said exactly that - All this shite about them being alive for ages and getting "nipped" at by sharks could all just be bollox - They could have just been eaten within 30 minutes of being left by the boat - end of story!

We were watching it on DVD, and the funny thing was at the end and my girlfriend said "watch it - the bloody credits will come up now, hehe!" - AND THEY DID!!!
We even went back through the film and then fast-forward through it to ensure that some hadn't been missed out on a dodgy DVD, but no so!

How this is plastered all over adverts on bus shelters saying "blair witch meets jaws" is beyond me. Blair witch was ****, but this just takes the piss!

[daz73]

Blair witch was brilliant m8..dont be silly now..

[/dev/null]

The forum must have censored out the word "brill" then, lol! :whistle

Just plucked this from the cinema website (searching what to go and see with the missus on Friday)

Based on true events, OPEN WATER is a high impact movie that is sure to be the terrifying hit of 2004.

Oh well, lol...

[ABCMan]

Based on true events, OPEN WATER is a high impact movie that is sure to be the terrifying hit of 2004.

i think they might have missed a word out of that

Based on true events, OPEN WATER is a high impact movie that is sure to be the terrifyingly bad hit of 2004.

[thedriver]

Watched this film earlier. I really thought this was an excellent film. Quite thought provoking and shows how small decisions can have large impact on the course of your life.

As a statement of a true story, the following is quite true....


"Based on a true story only the facts have been changed."

I did enjoy the film and thought how well it had been made considering how it had been filmed on a limited budget.

I wish all my own movies could be shot, and edited in such a good fashion.

Anyway I'd give it a 8/10 for showing how small decisons can alter your destiny.

IMHO :thumbs