This movie was the best horror/FF film !

It didn't scare me. I found it quite boring

I think the reason it's so terrifying and so gut-wrenching is because the way it's filmed. It felt very real to me, like I was really there. I could very much imagine the way they felt, the building terror, the expectation of rescue fading by the hour, coming to terms with the certainty of one's death, imaging wat it's like to be torn to pieces by a savage animal. Ugh! Chilling.

I think one needs to be truly intimate with the ocean to appreciate this film.

What gets to me about Open Water is its demonstration of utter indifference. The sharks aren't as they are in Jaws. There's no malevolence, they are not portrayed as villains. It just is. It is sharks doing as sharks do. It's an environment of complete apathy. It shows how quickly our illusions of our own little secure worlds can be shattered by the slightest alteration of circumstance.

"This can't be happening....how can this be happening?? We can actually be eaten alive by sharks out here!!"

This realization is sickening in its observation, as they struggle to retain their sanity in a world they cannot at all control. It exemplifies the whole point of how cruel life's impartiality is. How did it get to this? What went wrong? I was just "petting the sharks" a few hours ago. Yup, and now you're shark bait.

I adore this movie (aside its flaws) because it's horror that stems from circumstances that were not intended to be horrific. I find that prospect to be a hell of a lot more unsettling because it's relatable. A heavenly dive quickly turns into hell on Earth with the worst demise imaginable, yet even then....there is no evil. You can't assign morality. It shows the beauty and horror of life in the same short timespan, and how quickly one can change into the other despite our deluding ourselves that we are always fully in control when we're anything but. This dichotomy is the essence of real terror, and this movie nailed it.

I agree. People were affected very differently by this movie. I first watched this more than a decade ago and didn't think much of it then. It had a shaky camera, true story, Blair Witch-vibe which was very popular at the time. I knew it was going for realism, but it never went beyond that. Now my life is different. I have a job and take regular vacations and adventure activities. Watching it again, i realised this was one terrifying and intense movie. Much of the horror comes from the straight forward, simplistic realism. No story is being told here, unlike its sequel Adrift (which i also like btw....just me, i have a thing for watery movies). There is no moral, no cinematography. Just straight forward representation of events. They call this a psychological horror, and it really is. The horror comes from your personal experience of the world and how much you can relate. Even if you don't dive, we all have experienced when things go wrong, when a fun activity takes a horrible turn, when the simplest becomes complicated, when the most unlikely takes place and only a second to unfold. Nothing was inherently scary in this movie. They were only stranded for a few hours, and even when the film finishes, it was only one night (humans can go for days without food or water). The sharks weren't big. The one that bit Daniel was possibly smaller than him. This was no monster movie. However, their situation was serious, dire and hopeless from the beginning, because of the unique circumstance. They were virtually impossible to find and after 7 hours, i was surprised they didn't freak out at the hopelessness of the situation as i would have. The worse for me wasn't the shark bite or one night drifting in pitch black stormy oceans but the realisation that there was no respite.

I love this movie. It's one of my favorites and yes, I find it scary!

Why the hell did he have the knife out. Basically killed himself by accidently cutting himself when the sharks were around.