Saw this last night after a MASSIVE waiting period for this to arrive in local theaters near me; my better half wanted to see this in a big way, being a fan of shark films, but Lion Gate Films was doing a test period in theaters to see how this would draw. Only select art house theaters in New York City (I live in the suburbs of NY) were showing this, until last night.

I gotta say....this was the absolute creepiest, most frightening thriller I have seen in a long, long time....and the documentary-style film does not rely on any music, effects, score or CGI to achieve these results. The fact-based story about two scuba divers who are left behind by the boat that dropped them there scared the **** out of us because of the REALISM about it.....they are left out there in the water for just about 24 hours and encounter sharks, jellyfish and skin-biting undersea life of all kinds....and they have no way of defending themselves...it was REALLY creepy.....just imagine being in that situation, yourself, and what you would do....with no land or anything to tread over to and grab hold of....just the middle of the ocean with unknown life beneath you. Truly chilling, and MUCH MUCH better than the handful of these direct-to-video pieces of crap about shark attacks that are littering the new release shelves of video stores now.

And I mean the whole way this was filmed was good and creepy.....how the scuba diving boat director takes a wrong head count and forgets about the two left behind, how the two of them drift off course until finally the sun sets and night falls and the sharks begin circling them.....and man, were the night time scenes frightening.....the screen is black, with sudden flashes of lightning and thunder and then you suddenly see the sharks circling the two divers' feet beneath them while they scream....really creepy.

You know what annoyed me most about watching this film? The ****ing idiots that came to the theater thinking this was supposed to be Jaws....I cant tell you how many morons I saw walking down the aisle with their tubs of popcorn, their date next to them, humming the Jaws theme and giggling like idiots....thinking this was supposed to be a horror shark attack film. After the film broke, two guys behind us were cursing, moaning and groaning that this was the "worst piece of **** they ever saw".....I was SO tempted to look back there, confront them and ask them "what EXACTLY did you expect this to be? This was NOT supposed to be a horror film --- you just DIDNT get the point because, like everyone else in the idiotic John Q Public, you need to be ENTERTAINED by some kind of Hollywood over the top extravaganza of special effects and top-tier actor titles; GOD FORBID something like Open Waters comes along, made with an independent feel without Hollywood's sugar coating of everything with a stupid love story and computer graphics, and you actually need to FOCUS ON THE FILM and what is happening up there....God Forbid, right? THIS WAS NOT THE POINT of what you just saw....it was NOT about horror, it was about IMAGINING being out there and enduring that yourself"......but I didnt because I simply thought that it wouldnt have made a difference anyway with these jackholes.

At any rate, go see Open Waters....I am not going to give the ending away, suffice to say that it shocked us. And it was refreshing in this day and age of "everything working out for the hero at the end of the film" motion picture-making.