Open Water 3: Cage Dive (2017)

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Aug 16, 2017
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Open Water 3 Cage DiveStarring Joel Hogan, Megan Peta Hill, Josh Potthoff, Pete Valley

Directed by Gerald Rascionato

The original Open Water was a visceral and frightening experience about two people stranded in the sea surrounded by sharks. Open Water 2 was a shitfest about a bunch of kids too stupid to stand on each other’s shoulders as a means to get to the ladder of a boat which is there the entire film.

So, where does that leave Open Water 3: Cage Dive? Well, it can’t get any worse, that’s for sure; and surprisingly, there’s a good flick in there that’s home to some excellent shark carnage… just not enough of it.

The film centers on three “friends” from California who head to Australia on an extreme adventure that they plan on filming as part of an audition tape for a new reality show. As a means to get the eyes of the show’s producers, they tape themselves on a pre-planned cage dive adventure that finds them face-to-jaws with some terrifying great white sharks. Of course you know things go horribly awry as their tour boat is capsized and sunk by a large rogue wave that leaves both them and their fellow adventurers floating about like chum.

It’s a good setup, and there are lots of intense moments. In a nutshell Open Water 3: Cage Dive manages to stay afloat for its brisk runtime, but it’s eventually dragged down by the usual first person/found footage tropes that we’re all sick of, including but not limited to:

  • Incessantly reminding the viewer that “THEY HAVE TO DOCUMENT EVERYTHING!“
  • Three(!) different on-camera close-up breakdowns/apologies
  • General acts of stupidity
  • Bickering to the tenth power

I could even forgive all that if they could have just kept the shark carnage coming, but at the end of the day we get a couple of important deaths that are too tame for the amount of time spent with the characters and one of them even takes place for the most part off-screen. Never a good thing. Especially for a shark flick.

All in all, though, this is a fine little ride that treads more water than it takes on. See it if you need a quick summer movie shark fix, but be aware there are much bigger and better fish in the sea.

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