just a few questions * spoilers*

Sharks, like other predators, often act on instinct (or rather "programming").

For instance, when confronted with a lion, the last thing you should do is try to run away. Because, even if it isn't hungry, it will immediately interpret that as "prey behaviour" and come after you. Like a cat that just cannot resist chasing after a ball that rolls by.

Similar behaviour patterns will cause a shark to switch to "attack mode". Like when swimming, a calm stroke is much less likely to draw his attention than a wild, splashing "I gotta get out of here" type swimming.

Swimming in a group at a steady pace they were relatively safe because the shark had not identified them as prey. You mustn't forget that humans are not a natural prey for sharks. The circling he did was basically cheking out this "anomaly" he had spotted, this strange cluster moving along the surface. It was too big to be one sea turtle or a seal (which are regular snacks to a shark) and those don't move in packs, so the shark was confused. His passing next to them was basically just seeing what they were, which was either "prey" (in which case he attacks) or "non-prey" (in which case he would lose intrest and move on).

It wasn't until the one guy swam away from the cluster at high speed that the shark decided that they were acting like prey after all and attacked. And after he'd tasted one of those strange surface creatures and found out they were indeed edible, well, why not grab a few more (especially if one is loosing blood, blood being another great trigger to set off a shark) ?

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. - Bill Maher

reply share

add reply

formatting help

1: The only way i can see how the boat could have capsized is they were moving really fast and turning at the exact time they hit the rock, which is highly unlikely.

2: The boat is staying afloat because of the air trapped in the hull when it turned over but would b slowly leaking out of the hole where the keel was ripped from, so yes the boat would have eventually sunk when all the air escaped.

3: Warren would have known the boat was going to sink but stayed anyway because he knew how dangerous being in the water would be.

4: Why would a hungry shark move away from his food source? like any predator he will stay close so he can feed whenever he feels the need. But i must say that one bite would have attracted dozens of other predators, especially so close to a reef.

"Negative, I am a meat Popsicle…"

reply share

add reply

formatting help

hi k_stromvall,

would hitting a rock really flip a boat?

Extremely unlikely. It would take a huge amount of force, and continued force (until the inertia of the boat's centre of gravity is overcome). And once the keel is ripped off, there's no force to continue the rotation, so the boat should have righted itself. My question, that goes along with that, is how is the water shallow enough that the keel can hit the bottom and be ripped off, but deep enough for the mast to be sticking straight down? Somebody mentioned at some point in that scene that maybe they'd hit a whale, but whales don't just blunder into boats that are essentially drifting.

and would it have sunk?

Depends how much air was trapped inside. The hole the keel tore off the outer hull would only have gone through to the inner hull, and not necessarily let out any of the air in the living quarters. So it was conceivable that the boat could have stayed afloat -- although riding low in the water, not going under completely. Like most aspects of this flick, we're not given enough information to be able to tell.

and wouldnt a guy like warren who has experience with boats have know that it would have sunk?

I think he did know, and that's why he looked so doomed. But he still felt that making a swim for it was pretty definitely suicidal. I guess all he could do was clutch to the EPIRB and hope.

It didn't make a lot of sense to me that there would be several sharks circling the capsized boat in the last scene we saw of Warren -- how were they supposed to know there was a source of food there? -- but I guess when he saw them he knew how he'd be ending up.

In the last shot of him, when he was leaning over to look at the sharks and had the EPIRB in his hand, I was expecting it to slip on the hull and for him to overbalance and fall in. I think that would have been a better way to convey his end.

and I find it really highly unlikely that the same shark tried to kill all four of them

Yeah, I do too. Sharks just don't feed that frequently, so it had no reason to keep tracking them. As ooSAVoo has said, what was more likely (since they were right on top of a reef) was that -- especially once there was blood in the water -- they'd get attacked by other sharks or other predators.

yet for some reason when they are sitting still at night which is sharks feed they are left un touched?

There was a moment as they were waking up when we saw only two in the water -- the movie played with us and tried to make us think someone had been eaten during the night. (The most usual times for sharks to feed, like most fish, is late dusk or early dawn.) I think if I'd written this film, I would have had one of them go like that, and leave the others to deal with it. I think that would have been even more scary, and allowed for more dramatic development (except this film didn't really do a lot with its characters, did it?). And if that meant it needed another person, then how hard would it have been for Warren to have a girlfriend too (poor Kieran, he never seems to get a girl in his movies!), and have the dramatic tension of her going with the others and him staying on the upturned boat?


Edited to add two questions of my own:

Where did the idea come from of there being an island they could swim to? Did Luke mean the one they'd been on the previous day where they holed the dinghy? Once they start swimming, the island never seems to get mentioned again, and when they do actually find a rocky outcrop they seem surprised.

And why did they need to wear wetsuits? As Warren pointed out, there were inherent dangers from sharks, and black wetsuits have been proven to attract sharks' attention. Wasn't it kinda asking for it to wear them? (But maybe I'm missing some point here.)


You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

reply share

add reply

formatting help

[deleted]