Review: Open Water (15)

FOR £70,000 you could struggle to buy a small flat in Newport.

Or you could bankroll a unique nerve-racker about a shark-pecked couple that has swept up global audiences. Strange what money can buy.

Open Water faces the primal fear of being left behind and forgotten about.

It's a tribute to director and writer Chris Kentis and his cinematographer wife, Laura Lau, that they managed it on a shoestring.

Special effects are non-existent - not even a rubber shark - Kentis used unknowns Ryan and Travis (a true-life couple) and left them bobbing in the Caribbean with real sharks nuzzling their legs. If they look scared, it's not all acting.

They play Susan and Daniel, a pair of unlikeable, stuck-up yuppies tied to hectic schedules. A week in the Caribbean offers a chance for some quality time, romance and scuba-diving.

But they wander off from the dive group and surface to find the boat has gone, victims of a headcount mistake.

They then drift in the big blue, vulnerable to the raw mercy of nature and the vagaries of passing sharks.

The couple squabble and blame and cling to each other: oxygen tanks still on and grey fins circling.

In one fantastic scene, stroboscopic lightning flashes of a night storm.

They endure dehydration, jellyfish, false hope.

Open Water is very short at just 1hr 20mins, mainly because of the limits of making two figures in the ocean interesting viewing.

Some of the opening camera work - all grainy, rushed close-ups and washy scenes of the resort - gets annoying.

The dialogue is brave, yet often sounds stilted. But I felt a real itch to help these two, an urge for the spotter planes and rescue choppers to hurry up and scramble.

And the fear is not a Blair Witch terror of the paranormal, but an unease of the "I can see my arms but not my legs" sort.

It's enjoyably unsettling, but never scary.

The real triumph of this bold, intriguing thriller is that in a world of silly money and computer effects a cinematic minnow can still swim with the sharks.

Mono rating: six out of ten