Open Water 2: Adrift Information

Open Water 2: Adrift (called Adrift in the UK, Australia, and various other countries, and called Open Water 2 in Germany) is a 2006 thriller filmed entirely in Malta, starring Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight, Jr., Niklaus Lange, Ali Hillis, Cameron Richardson and Eric Dane. Promotional posters claim the film is based on actual events.

Plot

A group of old middle-school friends, Amy (Pratt), James (Speight), Zach (Lange), Lauren (Hillis), Dan (Dane), and his new girlfriend Michelle (Richardson) go for a weekend cruise on a yacht. Amy and James also bring their baby, Sarah. Dan has arranged the weekend getaway aboard a yacht he pretends to own, but the vessel actually belongs to Dan's boss.

James, Zach, Lauren, and Michelle jump into the water for a swim. Dan grabs Amy, who is terrified of the water and has been teased about wearing a life vest during the entire cruise, and jumps over the side with her, partly as a prank and partly to force her to go in, in spite of her aquaphobia. However, nobody thought to lower the ladder to re-board the ship, so they find themselves trapped in the water with only two masks, a dive knife, and a toy dolphin float.

Unable to climb the high, smooth sides of the boat, or lunge high enough to grab the railing even with support, they tread water for a while, except that Dan's girlfriend, Michelle, has the float and Amy is wearing a life vest. Dan takes the dolphin float and attempts to climb onto it, in order to have something to support him as he attempts to lunge high enough. After a couple of attempts, he pops the plastic float, rendering it useless. Now Michelle also has to tread water, and is getting cold and panicky as well.

They hear a phone ringing and swim around the boat to see a jacket containing the phone hanging from a railing, with a sleeve dangling in the breeze. One of them is just able to lunge high enough to tug the sleeve and dislodge the jacket. Everyone grabs for the jacket, turning it this way and that, trying to keep the pocket with the phone out of the water. Zach finally gets the phone out of the pocket and answers the call. They all hear a happy birthday song being sung by some well-wishers, but are unable to get the caller's attention. The call ends and Zach is unable make an outgoing call. So, in a fit of frustration, assuming that the phone is defective, he throws it angrily into the water. The others are aghast.

The group resorts to stripping and using their bathing suits and clothes to make a rope. A speed-boat races by with another group of teenagers on board. They try to attract their attention but the people on the boat think they are only greeting them, and disappear over the horizon. After a couple of attempts they manage to get one end of the rope wrapped around a railing. Instead of having the lightest person climb up, Dan attempts to climb up. He pulls himself up slowly and carefully, and his fingers brush the gunwale but the makeshift rope rips apart because no-one tried to boost him up, leaving a couple of pieces still wrapped around the railing. Now they are mostly naked and have only a partial rope.

Meanwhile, James goes underwater, and is fooling around with the prop, perhaps thinking to remove it and use it as a grappling hook, but he drops the knife. He desperately swims down after it and manages to catch it, but now, deep down, his lungs are aching for air and he desperately swims for the surface. As he swims back up in a panic, he smacks his head under the boat, and sinks unconscious into the water. He resurfaces slightly bloodied and with an apparent skull fracture.

Zach then tries to use the knife to stab a hole in the hull to make a handhold to help them climb up or to force the ladder down, but Dan, afraid to see an expensive boat he doesn't actually own incur damage, reacts without thinking and attempts to stop Zach. During the struggle, Zach is accidentally stabbed in the abdomen. Zach pulls out the knife from his side and drops it. The wound causes a lot of blood in the water. Lauren holds onto Zach for a while trying to comfort him, the remaining clothing is used to stop him bleeding.

Suddenly, in a fit of hysteria and fearing to incur attack of sharks attracted by the blood, Michelle begins to swim away, and goes under. Dan swims after her, and sees her lifeless body drifting underwater. He dives after her, but she sinks faster than he can swim down, and her body disappears into the depths.

After some time, at the end of his forces, Zach tells Lauren that he never told her that she looked really good one time on the beach. She holds him and begins crying and tells him that he will be able to tell her and see her when they get back to shore. He eventually dies as he did not leave the knife in to plug the wound, and she reluctantly lets go of his body which floats, face down.

As the day progresses, Lauren says she refuses to die treading water and attempts to swim back to shore to find help. She is never seen again.

Later that night, as it rains, James dies from his cranial injury. Dan unsuccessfully searches underwater for the knife (in the dark). He slams his mask on the hull in frustration and the lens pops out. Remembering the attempt with the knife, Dan uses it to wedge in the crevice of the side door for the ladder, giving him a handhold. Amy climbs over his shoulders, finally stepping onto his hand wrapped around the lens, and manages to grab the gunwale and pull herself back on board. Once on board, she lowers the ladder for Dan and tends to her baby, Sarah.

Instead of going up the ladder, Dan, racked by guilt, decides to swim off and let himself drown. Earlier, he had been screaming "it should have been me". Amy later sees him drowning slowly, throws in a life ring and then jumps in to save him, all the while vividly recalling her childhood inability to save her father from drowning. The scene ends inconclusively with a shot of Amy's father lying dead on the seabed, followed by a whiteout.

The penultimate scene takes place at an unspecified time, on a clear calm day. A fishing boat approaches the yacht, seeing the lowered ladder and life ring still floating in the water " no one had pulled them in. The yacht appears empty except for the sound of baby Sarah crying on the lower deck.

In the final scene, on the upper deck, in slow motion, a quiet Amy stands looking around; she looks at Dan, who is lying face down on the deck (it is unclear if he is still alive). While the ending caused some confusion among viewers, the film's director has indicated that five out of the six adults die, and Lauren just drifted to an unknown island.

Some versions of the movie had captions at the end which tell viewers that Dan, Amy, and the baby survived, but that Dan and Amy never see each other again.

Cast

• Susan May Pratt as Amy
• Richard Speight Jr. as James
• Niklaus Lange as Zach
• Ali Hillis as Lauren
• Cameron Richardson as Michelle
• Eric Dane as Dan
• Wolfgang Raach as Amy's Father
• Alexandra Raach as Little Amy

Reception

Critical response

Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an overall score of 40% based on 10 reviews.

Box office

In the UK, the film opened at 327 theatres, grossing £337,474, averaging £1,033 per theatre. 123 theatres dropped the film for the second weekend, and its ticket sales declined by 75 percent, making £85,541, averaging £419. During the third weekend, the film's sales tumbled 90 percent after 183 more theatres dropped it, making £8,896. The fourth weekend brought an additional 64 percent decline, and the film lost 13 theatres, while grossing £3,198. In the UK, the film finished with an overall gross of £707,352.

In Germany, the film's opening weekend brought "?293,601, averaging "?3,764 at 78 theatres. During the second weekend in Germany, the film grossed "?121,997, averaging "?1,564 at 78 theatres. In Germany, the movie grossed at least "?496,357.

In Spain, the film's opening weekend earned "?270,396, averaging "?1,767 at 153 theatres. During the second weekend, the film grossed "?139,503. In Spain, the film grossed at least "?713,834.

The film has grossed £2,583,205 worldwide.

Origin

The script was written before Open Water (2003) was in theaters. After Open Water became a success, the film was produced and the name was changed to Open Water 2: Adrift in some countries to capitalize on the success of the earlier film.