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.