DVD Review HTF REVIEW: Open Water (1 Viewer)

[Jesse Blough]

"I think the fly-killing scene is there because"...

I agree with you on that, also I think that it showed humans killing something so small so later when the sharks are circling the humans... You get the idea. The situation gets flipped.

I don't think there were any major unnecessary scenes in the movie.

 

[Harold Wazzu]

Anyone think this will be the next Blair-witch (a fad that will fade away and end up in the dollar bins) or will this movie stand the test of time?

 

[JulianK]

I reviewed the UK version for my website, which you can find here.

The extra bonus material is interview footage, probably shot in the UK during the theatrical release's promotional period. As is often the case, it was added to the disc specifically to make the US disc more attractive to UK buyers who might otherwise have imported the US version.

 

[Michael Elliott]

Thanks Julian. I just received an e-mail from a guy who says he heard Japan is going to get some sort of limited edition set but he didn't know exactly what would be included.

 

[CraigL]

Interesting about that bonus material...AND the "follow the white rabbit" mode as well.

I'm very curious about the Japanese version now.

 

[Lewis Besze]

My comments were in context of the genre,and not the relationship's POV.You're probably right about the characters here,I was just annoyed,because I've seen it coming a mile away,because of the trend these movies bring.

 

[Eddie W.]

I quite enjoyed this film for the fact that it wasn't typical Hollywood dreck. No CGI sharks, no test-screened happy ending, no over reliance on music cues to build tension etc.

Whatever it's faults, it's one of those rare movies that leave me thinking about it long after it's ended.

 

[John Macri]

Overall I felt this was a very effective and suspenseful film. Although in the actual incident the couple was not believed to have been killed by sharks, this film plays this primordial fear expertly.

Like others I was disappointed in the video quality. There was a very low level of detail on anything but tight closeups. This is surprising as my semi-pro 16:9 MiniDV camcorder produces highly-detailed DVDs. Perhaps they were going for this effect or the difficult conditions made accurate focusing impossible. At any rate I became engrossed in the story and forgot this shortcoming once the sharks appeared. The 6.1 DTS ES was awesome - I could really feel the bass and rear center channel.

All in all an enjoyable viewing experience.

 

[Chris Parham]

I just finished enjoying this film. I think the runtime was perfect to tell the story. I don't remember when a movie made me feel so claustrophobic (ironic as it takes place in OPEN water).
As for the transfer, I have to agree with the Modyar, it looked pretty crappy on my system (X1 projector). I also felt that, aside from the thunderstorm, the audio was kind of throw away. I'm not sure what I expected from this track (my first DTS-es discrete since upgrading) but I was stoked when my amp picked up the correctly flagged disc and quickly disappointed with the "gimmicky" sounding "glug, glug" sounds from the rear.
However I may have felt about the A/V, it is the story that counts and I really was drawn into the plight of the characters. I thought their dialog rang true given the circumstances and was on the edge of my seat as night yielded scenes completely devoid of visuals (very effective scene IMHO).

 

[Grant H]

The transfer was very uneven, but it's probably not accurate to say "the transfer" since I'm guessing that's exactly how the "film" looked.

That said since at times the picture is quite good, almost as good as film, but other times low-res garbage. I kind of wished they'd replaced the sun with a digital sun for that one shot. Stair-steppy as it was.

I don't know if it was digitally zoomed shots that caused that or what, but sometimes it was horrid. Other times it looked okay, but you could tell you weren't getting a lot of detail.

This movie was okay, and I found there to be a lot of realism at times, sometimes even the same moments that seemed so stupid. Since people are...well, you get the idea. I didn't care for the cutaways though I think I understood their purpose. In a short film, it just seemed like needless padding after a while. I mean, I knew other people were vacationing and having a good time without actually having to see it all the time.

It's worth a rent for the nude scene which is the only part I'll be thinking about for a long time.:b If your screen isn't too big, you'll hardly notice the aliasing of the breasts.

I highly recommend you peruse the bonus features to see just how hot Blanchard Ryan can really look. She's like the poor man's Charlize Theron with bigger breasts, or maybe the same size on a smaller woman. It's all relative.

It also might be a good movie to see with your girlfriend to ensure she has sex with you when you go on vacation with her.

 

[Rob Tomlin]

Good movie, but the video quality really stinks. The sound quality was pretty good, with a good utilization of the surrounds, though it isn't "reference" quality.

I personally disagree with the statement about "knowing before hand how it will end". I personally was quite surprised by the ending sincethis is based on "actual events" I thought that at least one of them would have survived in order to tell the story. That wasn't the case.

 

[CraigL]

Having just watched 28 Days Later, this look beautiful.

I watched the movie for the first time after seeing it twice in theaters and I have to say it might have scared me more this time than the other two times. If you have that innate fear of the open water already, it makes this movie 10x scarier. What exactly would YOU do on that situation??

 

[Michael Elliott]

Watching JAWS as a kid will keep me from any situation like this.


A little feedback needed but....

For those unhappy with the transfer, are you saying that the transfer itself is to blame or the look of the film? When reviewing it I really didn't think the transfer itself was very bad. Meaning, there wasn't any print damage, scratches or edge enhancement. The ugly look of the film is the only way it could look so I really didn't put any fault on the DVD itself. If you guys think it was the transfer itself I should probably reconsider how I review these things because LG has a few more "digital" releases coming up.

 

[Grant H]

Any video quality problems looked to be from the DV source to me, Michael.

Wow, I just heard KITT's voice say that.

That said, anybody who saw this theatrically should chime in, I suppose. Wow, I can't imagine looking at some of that on the big screen. Some of those shots looked so amazingly low quality on a 38" screen.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

I saw it cinematically, and some of it did hurt to look at - I was not expecting the digital cameras to offer Star Wars-level quality, but I was astonished at how bad the picture really was. Reading this thread, I get the impression the DVD is probably pretty close to how it was in the cinema.

Still a pretty good film, and I enjoyed watching it - once I adjusted to the really poor picture quality.

 

[Rob Tomlin]

Like I said, "the video quality really stinks". I can't say how much of this is the "transfer" and how much of it is because of the source since I didn't see it in the theater.

But knowing what we know, I have little doubt that most of the problems are due to the source material. Someone mentioned 28 Days Later above, which was also shot on DV and it looked similar to this, only worse.

I saw some serious "stair stepping" going on whenever there was any type of motion from the subject. The picture had a real lack of clarity and detail, and was very soft overall.

Personally, when it comes to ratings of DVD's and picture quality, I definitely prefer the rating to be based on what the DVD actually looks like. In other words, this could be an absolutely perfect transfer (some say that it actually looks better on DVD than it did theatrically, which is certainly possible since the DV had to be transferred to film), I think it would be a huge mistake to give a DVD with picture quality this poor a "perfect" rating for video quality. Anyone who purchased the DVD based on that rating would be incredibly disappointed.

I think the better approach is to discuss the fact that the actual transfer is probably very good (although it can be difficult to determine how much of the pq is due to the transfer vs. the source) but the source wasn't, and therefore the final score is reduced accordingly.

Here is an example on the other side of the coin: The Fifth Element is considered to have great picture quality (and I completely agree). But in terms of a quality "transfer", it actually isn't that great because of the Edge Enhancement that was applied. But most people give that disc a perfect, or at least very close to perfect, rating.

Most people don't care about rating pq soley based on how well it was "transferred" to DVD. They care about the bottom line: how it actually looks.

My 2 cents.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Absolutely disagree. If the DVD reflects the actual look of the film, that's all you can expect from it. Why should we downgrade a ating of a film just because the filmmaker, for whatever reason, decides to make a film in a particular way that means the picture is not as good as it might have been had it been made in 35mm? If a film is filmed in 16mm, it's not going to be as good as 35mm - should we then lower the rating there? Or raise it if a film is filmed in 70mm. Hell, should we lower the rating of a very good transfer of a 70 year old B&W film for not looking quite as good as an average modern blockbuster transfer?

And the review made reference, several times, to the way the film was shot, actually saying things like "the film was shot on digital and then transferred over to film so that there is going to lessen the possible picture quality " and "the transfer is exactly what you’d expect of a film of this type. Some might think the low grain and slick look means a bad transfer but this is how the film is supposed to look." Reading the review, you can be left in no doubt that it is a great transfer, but not a very good-looking transfer.

All we can expect from our DVDs is that they present the film that was made in the best way possible, and if a disc achieves this, it should get full marks.

 

[CraigL]

Fyi...i saw it twice theatrically. This was VERY faithful to what I saw and I have to admit, it may even be a tad bit better. It was VERY blockly blown up to that size. My second screening, it was practically sold out so I was watching it in the 3rd or 4th row. Imagine that.

 

[Rob Tomlin]

Absolutely the rating should be lowered there! If it looks like Sh*t, why would you give it a perfect rating for picture quality?

Like I said, discuss it in the review. It is a huge mistake to give something that has video quality this poor a perfect rating. Perfect "transfer" or not.

The other option would be to give two seperate picture ratings: one for the quality of the "transfer" and the other for quality of the actual "picture". Again, the problem here is differentiating between what is inherent in the source from the transfer.

 

[Grant H]

This nit has blue eyes, this one has green; hmm, I'll take the green-eyed one. She's hotter.

j/k