The movie is based, or rather inspired, by a holidaying couple's actual disappearance off the Great Barrier Reef in 1998. Thomas and Eileen Lonergan, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were taking a break in Australia after three years in the Peace Corps, when they took a dive boat trip to the outer edge of the Reef
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Shark bait
Sep 7 2004
Rob Driscoll, The Western Mail
THERE are no mechanical, or computer-generated sharks in this surprise or "sleeper" American box- office hit; just real ones.
And when director Chris Kentis wanted them on camera, he simply chucked a few bucketloads of bloody tuna heads and dead fish into the sea - where his lead actors were already treading water - and waited for the sharks to turn up for their tea . . .
"Sharks aren't really interested in biting or eating people," says Kentis a little over-confidently. "Their diet has been proven to be fish, fish and more fish. We'd throw in beef, all kinds of meat - they'd go nowhere near it.
"So we'd throw the tuna bait in the water to get the sharks to move, so that we could film them."
Try telling that to Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis, the two stars of the movie, who spent 120 hours in the deep blue Caribbean sea, 20 miles offshore amid all kind of marine life - including the real-life, honest-to-God sharks that give the film its chilling authenticity - while filming Open Water.
Ryan admits she felt "a lot of fear" each time she entered the water, no matter how much logical explanation was being drummed into her brain.
"Intellectually I knew I was going to be fine, but there's a primal fear that kicks in, and then the adrenaline flows," she explains.
"Those are sharks, with big teeth, they are big, powerful, muscular animals - and they're near you. It's scary.
"So no matter what people tell you, it is dangerous, and something could have gone wrong - but the odds were very good that they wouldn't. I certainly wouldn't have gone in the water if I thought for a minute that I wasn't being very well looked after."
Financed and crewed entirely by husband-and-wife team Chris Kentis (director) and Laura Lau (producer), Open Water has proved to be this summer's off-the-wall hit for adult American audiences seeking alternative fare to the big-budget blockbusters - even if it's sent them out of cinemas with their nerves torn to shreds.
Based on a real event, this ultra- low-budget white-knuckle ride maroons a scuba-diving yuppie couple in shark-infested waters, following a tour guide's incorrect head count, and then stays with them as they slide steadily down the food chain.
Even director Kentis concedes that the shooting of the movie, to the meagre tune of £275,000, occasionally got a little dicey. He and Lau were virtually the entire crew, and they put on scuba gear to film underwater with digital hand-held cameras, and regularly sparred for position with sharks.
Actors Ryan and Travis, meanwhile, wore shark-proof chain mail under their wet suits, but that did not cover their hands or heads. And it didn't help that one of Ryan's hands had been bitten down to the bone by a barracuda earlier in the shoot - and yet she still agreed to continue swimming with the sharks.
"They always say you shouldn't have an open wound in the water, so that made me a little nervous," she says, with remarkable understatement. "But I thought, 'Oh, come on, either your number's up, or it isn't.'"
Brave, or possibly foolhardy words, one can't help but feeling. Despite Kentis's theory that sharks only eat fish, attacks on humans are there in the record books.
Dropping anchor 18 or more miles offshore in the Bahamas, the only thing preventing a giant bull shark grabbing Ryan or Travis for lunch and swimming off was a heavy-duty finishing line tethering both divers to the 60ft lobster boot that served as the crew's floating base.
What was to stop a shark from grabbing one of the stars and dragging them to their death on to the ocean bottom? Absolutely nothing. That primal terror you see on screen is genuine, a point not lost in a feeding frenzy of rave reviews in the States.
The movie is based, or rather inspired, by a holidaying couple's actual disappearance off the Great Barrier Reef in 1998. Thomas and Eileen Lonergan, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were taking a break in Australia after three years in the Peace Corps, when they took a dive boat trip to the outer edge of the Reef.
Both experienced divers, they surfaced to find that dive boat The Outer Edge and its 24 other divers had left St Crispin's Reef without them.
It was two days before the horrified skipper found the Lonergans' belongings including Tom's wallet, glasses and clothes stowed on board, and realised that he had mistakenly abandoned the couple in shark-teeming waters 45 miles from shore.
A subsequent five-day search across 3,200 square miles of ocean ended unsuccessfully, and it has never been discovered what happened to the Lonergans - though experts agree that the couple would have been torn apart by sharks, if they had not already drowned of exhaustion.
While relatives and friends of the Lonergans are clearly in no hurry to see Open Water, director Chris Kentis stresses that it was never his intention to dramatise that real story.
"I did no research on those people, and I didn't want to represent their relationship or their lives," he says. "We changed the names, and we invented our own characters, because their personal lives had nothing to do with the story I wanted to tell - and also, out of respect for them.
"We also wanted to leave the exact setting of our movie ambiguous, because we didn't want to lay that trip on anybody's tourist trade."
Like Susan and Daniel, Open Water's fictional couple, the people who created the film are certified open water scuba divers, and they are a couple. Unlike Susan and Daniel, Laura Lau and Chris Kentis are married, and have a daughter; the tension between the couple in the film "has nothing to do with our marriage!" laughs Lau.
She and Kentis are very much a film-making team. Though their duties often overlap, Lau produced Open Water, and photographed the film with Kentis, who wrote, directed and edited the movie, and was responsible for all in-the-water and underwater photography.
The film was ultimately shot at weekends and on holidays, largely due to financial restraints - which suited both the crew and cast down to the ground.
"That made the filming experience a lot more enjoyable, and we'd actually be quite keen to get back into the water," says Ryan.
Her co-star, Travis, agrees. "It was kind of enjoyable actually. I'm a water person anyway, so that was a bonus. It was physically demanding, but I wouldn't say it was torturous in any respect at all.
"We were in the water with the sharks for just two days out of the entire time. Then we'd go to the area where the non-union sharks might be!"
Ryan and Travis have nothing but praise for the film-making team of Kentis and Lau, especially in making sure of their safety and (relative) comfort.
"These guys were so cute, checking if we needed sunscreen or water," says Ryan. "We were like porpoises in the water, they'd have to lean over the side to put stuff on us or hand us bottles of water, because it was heavy and tiring getting in and out of the boat with all that equipment on.
"And on a really warm day, if the water was cold, you'd get out and warm up - and you wouldn't want to get back in. It was easier to stay in, you didn't notice the contrast as much."
When pushed just a little harder, both Ryan and Travis reveal there were moments when that primal terror did actually kick in.
"Daniel was much less afraid of the sharks, but I was terrified," admits Ryan. "The first day we shot, Chris jumps in the water, followed by Daniel, they're swimming around, and the sharks are eating the tuna, and not bothering them.
"I was thinking, 'I'm being a nancy. I need to get in the water!' But sure it was terrifying."
Travis recalls the odd moment of heart-leaping panic. "When they wanted the sharks to swim really close, they would throw the chunks of tuna right next to us, and I'd shout, 'A little close on that one! That's a little close, guys!'"
Diving and equipment organisations may not be thrilled with the bad press their sport has been getting thanks to Open Water, but in the States it seems many cinemagoers have been bitten by the diving bug.
"It's like that thing with Titanic," says Ryan. "Could there be a more disastrous cruise ship experience? Yet after that movie came out, the cruise ship industry sold more tickets than they had in the previous 10 years. It went through the roof. I think, in some weird way, our movie's having the same effect on scuba-diving."
Although Kentis and Lau are no doubt grateful to the marketing campaign for Open Water, they concede that comparisons with The Blair Witch Project are superficial.
"Well, I guess the real connection is that Blair Witch was an incredibly low-budget, indie movie shot in digital cameras - and so is ours," says Lau. "But in all other respects, they're very different movies.
"We really weren't expecting the movie to take off like it has - it was almost like our vacation video to us."
All involved insist they never expected Open Water to play outside the arthouse and festival circuits - but following the bidding frenzy it created at The Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, everyone wanted a piece of the movie.
It will almost certainly make stars of its good-looking young leads, Ryan and Travis. Both have the luxury to juggle their ensuing movie options.
"My goal is to do something indoors," jokes Ryan.
Travis, however, insists he would go back into the water "in a heartbeat". He's passionately hooked on diving, and he has been diving since completing the film.
"I would dive with sharks again, too," he says, without a hint of bravado. "The minute I got in the water, I instantly felt at home."
Does that mean that he never really got scared during the filming of Open Water?
"Ah, now that's a little different," he says.
"There were a couple of scenes where they wanted some long shots, and the boat pulled away from us some distance.
"We had a little bit of a swell, and for a second or two, you lost sight of it on a couple of occasions. That feeling of abandonment - that's a little bit more intense for me than the sharks!"
Open Water opens in cinemas on Thursday
