Open Water 3: Cage Dive (2017) Review
Open Water 3: Cage Dive (2017) Review
Brothers Jeff and Josh Miller (Joel Hogan and Josh Patthoff), along with Jeff’s girlfriend Megan (Megan Peta Hill), agree to go on a cage dive Down Under in shark-infested waters and film their experience as an audition tape for an extreme reality show. However after a rogue wave hits their boat our threesome find themselves without a vessel and a number of hungry Great White sharks for company as they tread water.
A sequel to Open Water and Open Water 2 that, aside from featuring people stranded in shark invested waters, actually has nothing to do with the others. That’s not surprising when you learn that Adrift (the second film) and Cage Dive have been incorporated into the franchise rather than made with the brand name intact from the start. Written and directed by Gerald Rascionato this found-footage film is mercifully short at around an hour and twenty minutes but still feels around forty minutes too long.
With recent release 47 Meters Down being primarily about a doomed cage dive surrounded by hungry sharks you may decide to give this a wide berth. You’d be right to do so but this is no carbon copy, in fact the cage dive of the title is incidental. It takes up just a couple of minutes of screen-time and our main characters are not stuck in it forthwith but left treading water for the remaining duration of the film.
Open Water 3 could almost be funny if it wasn’t so brow-slappingly bad. Jeff (Joel Hogan) has heart issues that require medication (I can totally relate there as I’m the same) but here he is undertaking a challenge that will make his poorly heart’s rate accelerate madly all in the name of creating an audition tape that the threesome are looking to put together for an extreme reality show – again, not something one’s cardiologist would recommend someone with a poorly heart. It’s an ill-conceived plot device to create drama in a film that wouldn’t know drama if it swam up and bit it on the ass.
When faced with imminent death and with no rescue from their plight in sight our characters expend vital energy bickering and squabbling over who’s shagging who as they tread water in shark-infested water – yeah, like you’d do that when I’m without food, drinkable water and a big fishy circling me for lunch – they also keep filming!!!! Seriously? Elsewhere it’s found-footage business as usual, there’s even Blair Witch style-sobbing-to-camera confessionals to sink this derivative mess even further under water.
Recent shark flicks The Reef, The Shallows and 47 Meters Down all managed to keep their heads above water and deliver the goods. Open Water 3: Cage Dive is trading in on the goodwill that those films established with audiences and unfortunately resets the shark genre marker back to shlocky crap. It used to be that low-budget film-making created little gems, and even kick-started careers (think Sam Raimi, the late Tobe Hooper etc.) but found-footage shows that the guys calling the shots behind the camera nowadays are lacking in originality and going for the easy buck. What a sad state of affairs.
