Open Water (2003)

Film details
View on IMDb ↗CastBlanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis, Saul Stein, Michael E. Williamson, Cristina Zenato, John Charles
KeywordsSurvival, Natural Horror
Review
"Chris Kentis, who wrote, directed, edited, and shot the film (with his wife, Laura Lau), is working with prime pulp material—but he doesn't have a pulp sensibility. I mean this as a compliment. Shot on digital video and micro-budgeted, Open Water is terrifying precisely because it doesn't go in for cheesy shock tactics and special effects. (Those sharks are real.) Strictly speaking, it's not even in the shark-attack genre—it's more like a black comedy about how things can go horribly wrong on vacation. You think you're safe, and the next thing you know you're lost at sea and something's nibbling your gams. That's an apt metaphor for a lot more than scuba diving." - Peter Rainer, New York Magazine
Ranking history
The 1,000 Greatest Horror Films
Top 1,000Outside Top 1,000Missing ranking data
Dashed lines indicate missing ranking data. Select a point to view that year's published list. The 1,000 Greatest Horror Films list was not updated in 2022.
The 21st Century’s Greatest Horror Films
Published rankingNot ranked (outside published list)
The list was not updated from 2016 to 2019 or in 2022. It expanded from a Top 250 to a Top 500 in 2021. Full rankings beyond the published lists are not available. Dotted segments and hollow points indicate editions in which the film was outside the published list; their exact ranks are unknown.