Do you like movies with gloomy old mansions, secret passageways, clutching hands behind curtains, bloodcurdling screams, and the like? How about we throw in some Chicago gangsters and a hidden pirate treasure? Then you may like HOUSE OF SECRETS, a ‘B’ mystery originally sold to audiences as a horror thriller. It’s no classic, to be sure, but it is an enjoyable little low-budget film produced by tiny independent Chesterfield Pictures, who specialized in this sort of thing, and featuring a better than average cast of Familiar Faces.
Aboard a ship bound for London, a young American woman is accosted by a cad who swears he saw her leaving a drug palace in Paris. Globetrotting but near penniless Barry Wilding defends her honor, but the mysterious blonde won’t reveal her name. Barry runs into his old friend Tom while in Jolly Olde England, a detective on the trail of a murderer…
Released in 2017, Cage Dive is the third installment in the Open Water franchise. Once again, a group of friends are floating out in the middle of the ocean. Once again, there are sharks. There’s interpersonal conflict. There’s death and chattering teeth and plenty of debate about who deserves the blame and whether or not it’s a good idea to try to swim after a passing boat. Again, it’s hard not to feel that the whole situation could have been avoided with just a little common sense.
However, there is one big difference. This time, the story is told through …. found footage!
That’s right! Not only are Jeff (Joel Hogan), his brother Josh (Josh Potthoff), and his girlfriend Megan (Megan Peta Hill) floating out in the middle of the ocean but Josh is determined to film the whole thing. “Turn off the camera!” Megan shouts. “Guys, we said we were going to film the whole thing!” Josh shouts back. Meanwhile, the sharks are amazed at just how easy their hunt has gotten lately.
Why is Josh filming? Josh is obsessed with getting on a reality show and he’s making an audition tape. In order to prove that the three of them are wild and fun enough to get on television, he comes up with the idea of flying to Australia and going on a cage dive. (A cage dive is when you get in an underwater cage and dare a bunch of sharks to eat you.) Unfortunately, a sudden tidal wave causes the boat to capsize and …. well, you can guess the rest.
Sharks aren’t the only problem that Jeff, Josh, and Megan have to deal with. First off, Jeff has a heart condition and he hasn’t been taking his medication. Secondly, Josh and Megan have been having an affair. How long can they float in the ocean before all the secrets come out?
Usually, I can’t stand found footage films and the first half of Open Water 3 features everything that drives me crazy about the genre. There’s way too many scenes of people saying, “Are you filming?” and “Are you getting this?” It’s hard not to notice that the camera somehow always seems to be in exactly the right location to catch Megan undressing or Jeff’s mother asking him if he’s remembered to take his medication. With the exception of one clever scene where Josh attempts to keep Jeff from seeing footage of Megan cheating on him, it all feels rather awkward and it seems like it takes forever to actually get them into the water….
However, once they actually get into the water, the film picks up. It’s not that Jeff, Josh, and Megan somehow become any more likable. However, director Gerald Rascionato makes good use of the shaky aesthetic of the found footage genre to keep us just as off-balance and confused as the people in the water. Like them, we find ourselves struggling to figure out where the sharks are coming from. The film ends with a nice homage to The Blair Witch Project, with the witch replaced by a shark. It works far better than you might expect.
Even the film’s biggest flaw becomes a strength. Yes, the three main characters may not be likable and they may not be very smart. From the minute you hear Josh telling Megan to be careful with a flare, you know that we’re eventually going to get an exploding life raft. But their stupidity is disturbingly relatable. I hope I’m never stranded at sea because I’d probably accidentally set off a flair as well. More importantly, you don’t really regret the fact that none of these people are probably going to survive. If anyone in the film was likable, Open Water 3 would be unbearably depressing. Since they’re not, you’re free to root for the sharks.
So, I just watched the latest trailer for Avengers: Endgame. Here are a few of my initial thoughts:
First off, people always make jokes about how, while Thor’s a God and Captain America is basically 100 years old but still looks like Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner pretty much only brings a bow and arrow to the fight. But you know what? I was really happy to see Renner return, even if he does have a questionable haircut. And I was even more happy to see that, after being underused in the previous Avengers film, it looks like Scarlett Johannson has got a decent role.
Plus, for at least some of the film, Scarlett’s a redhead again!
I loved the trailer’s use of black-and-white. It added a sense of tragic grandeur to the whole thing.
I’m still traumatized by the end of the Infinity Wars. Yeah, I know that everyone will probably be resurrected and that there’s no way they’d ever kill off Spider-Man for real but seriously, that was hella depressing! “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good….” AGCK!
Captain Marvel shows up at the end and gets Thor’s seal of approval. One wonder if they waited to see this weekend’s box office numbers before deciding to include that scene at the end.
Speaking of which — where’s my review of Captain Marvel? I saw it earlier this week. I’ll be posting it soon.
It’s hard not to notice that Thanos wasn’t in this trailer. Of course, we did see him in the previous teaser.
Finally, I love the fact that Avengers: Endgame and Degrassi share the same tag line. “Whatever it takes!”
This is a song that really gets stuck in your head!
The song, of course, is about cars. Myself, I’ve always associated this song with Dazed and Confused. I’ve also always liked that line about the low rider getting a little higher because it’s such a 70s line. It’s like the parents think it’s about the car and the kids know it’s about the driver.
As for the video, my favorite part comes at the end:
Lost at sea, adrift at sea, swept away by the sea — any and all of these cliches will likely apply to readers of Danish cartoonist Rikke Villadsen’s The Sea, a physically-short but conceptually-dense graphic novel originally published in the artist’s home country in 2011 but only within the last few months making its way to the English-speaking world courtesy of Fantagraphics.
Which is to say, I suppose, that it’s easy to get pulled into the world this book either conjures and/or creates (depending on just how literally one chooses to view the tale it relates), yet impossible to find any firm footing within it.
For my part, I tend to take the proceedings herein as purely allegorical, but your willingness to do so — as well as whatever mileage you get from it — may indeed vary, and that’s all well, good, and more than likely Villadsen’s intention…
The generally-held view of the ancient mystical pseudo-scientific practice of alchemy is that it was all about turning lead into gold, but my understanding is that this is a rather limited “piece” of the overall alchemical project, which was largely concerned with creating that which didn’t exist before through the union of opposite polarities : male/female, animate/inanimate, precious metal/base metal, etc. Even that’s probably selling the whole “art” short, mind you, but for purposes of this review and its subject — Daria Tessler’s newly-released Fantagraphics Underground fancy hardcover graphic novel Cult Of The Ibis — it’ll do in a pinch.
We’ve lavished praise upon Tessler’s gorgeous riso-printed publications from Perfectly Acceptable Press on this site previously, but how well her rich, intricate style would translate both into the confines of more traditional “comic book” storytelling and, crucially, into black and white was an intriguing question for this critic as I…
The 2006 film, Open Water 2: Adrift, is a film about a group of people who are literally too stupid to live.
Now, that may sound like a harsh judgment but just consider what this film is about. A group of shallow friends get together for a birthday party on a yacht. They head out to the middle of the ocean. One-by-one, they all get into the water. One of the friends has been terrified of the water ever since her father drowned in front of her. She doesn’t want to get in the water so, of course, the owner of the boat picks her up and jumps overboard with her. With the exception of a sleeping infant, everyone is now in the water.
Oh! And guess what!
It didn’t occur to anyone to lower the ladder before getting in the ocean. That means there’s no way to get back on the boat! And now, everyone’s stuck in the water where they’ll presumably eventually die of either hypothermia or just general stupidity. They’ll also end up yelling at each other and arguing about whose fault it is. They’ll all discuss issues of wealth, religion, and envy. There’s nothing like a weighty theological discussion being conducted by a bunch of idiots floating in the ocean.
Of course, they do make a few attempts to get back on the boat. One guy tries to use a knife to climb back up the side of the boat but he just ends up getting stabbed instead. An attempt to grab hold of an American flag just leads to desecrated symbol of patriotism. One girl decides to pray, just to be reprimanded by the group atheist. At one point, everyone takes off their swimsuits and they attempt to tie them into a makeshift rope. It doesn’t work but now everyone’s naked. This movie knows what it’s doing.
We get a lot of shots of people floating listlessly in the ocean. In order to pad out the run time, there’s a lot of pointless slow motion. Amy (Susan May Pratt), the hydrophobe, has a flashback to her father’s death and it’s amazing how little sympathy the film manages to generate for someone who watched helplessly while a parent drowned. Because Amy’s supposed to be scared of the water, she spends most of the movie floating around with this dumbass look on her face. I’m a hydrophobe too. If I found myself in this situation, I’d probably scream until I exhausted myself and drowned. But I wouldn’t float around with this stupid beatific look on my face.
This film was sold as being a sequel to Open Water, though it actually went into production before Open Water was released. After Open Water was a surprise box office success, the film’s title was changed from Adrift to Open Water 2: Adrift. There are obvious similarities between the two films but the major difference is that the couple in Open Water ended up stranded through no fault of their own. On the other hand, the folks in Open Water 2 were just too dumb to lower a ladder.
Open Water was effective but depressing. Open Water 2 is just kind of stupid.
Through the Shattered Lens 