Three beautiful 20-something Americans, two brothers and the young woman who comes between them, are off to Australia to do reckless, crazy things. And since they are Millennials, they of course want to film everything so they can have an awesome audition video for some reckless, crazy reality show. This also sets it up nicely so we can have first-person “found footage” that shows this dumb trio getting eaten by sharks when their shark-cage tour boat is flipped and sunk by a rogue wave (!). Awesome.
That really is the whole plot of Open Water 3: Cage Dive. The trio is left floating out in the open ocean, in just wetsuits and masks, waiting to be rescued. With no cage between them and the great white sharks that they were there to oggle, they realize that they are simply chum for the picking, especially as night falls. Each of them takes turns losing their shit, and (spoiler!) carnage inevitably ensues.
Who knew that the original, super-low-budget Open Water would spawn (yes!) a bunch of knock-offs and sequels? With its stripped down premise, the original was chilling and fresh. In the case of Open Water 3, I was laughing because the Blu-ray actually had a trailer for the extremely similar 47 Meters Down, which was just in theaters a couple months ago. (Sucks to be the one that went straight to video.) How many ways can one be stuck in the water only to be made into lunch by beasts of the deep?
Open Water 3: Cage Dive is exactly what you’d expect, nothing more. The three leads aren’t sympathetic, and the premise of everything being recorded as found footage is just silly. While you are getting your toes nibbled, would you really bother to keep one hand on the non-floating video camera to make sure you could emote? When I survive, I’m gonna post this on Facebook! Coolest vacation ever.
