The ocean ain’t what it used to be. The thrill is gone. Gods and dragons used to rule the seas, but now….sharks? Sweet, angry Neptune, where have you gone? Where are our ridiculous sea monsters? Sharks, known as seaboars in Australia, have become the penultimate ocean villain, and for that, we make movies.

Sharks are the shiznit when it comes to drumming up oceanic fear. Nothing quite grips us like the threat of a great white shark chomping us in half every time we go to the beach. Who’s afraid of an octopus? Jellyfish? Please.

This is why sharks fill theaters. Seeing a sharky bloodbath on a 20-foot screen will stir the familiar, yet irrational fear that most people have about being attacked by sharks. This fear causes people to replace the actual threat with a fake one by paying $7 to experience it in a theater with friends and family. By this process, shark attacks become more of a fantasy, and people force themselves to believe that it won’t happen to them. Seeing a celebrity in a ridiculous situation with a shark will serve to rid most people of the instinctual fear of sharkbite.

In response, Hollywood has shark scripts aplenty. Hell, I’ve even written a few. A film about a shark attack is a guaranteed summer hit, even in land-locked Iowa.

The problem with such a device is that plot takes a backseat. Every shark movie is pretty much: see shark -> freak out -> watch someone get eaten -> kill shark in extremely bloody scene -> hug.

Rarely is there a twist. There’s usually no need. But ho, ho! Perhaps Open Water is a little more open than we thought. Perhaps the genre is saturated to the point that fiction must become non, as every camera becomes a camcorder. The age of instant information and has demanded a cheap and usually unquestioned authenticity that a fairytale just can’t provide.

Open Water feeds this demand well. Unfortunately, the film is more focused on achieving 15 minutes of fame than anything. It’s simple, it’s dumb, it’s the pilot. A bonafide summer movie.