Adrift

A remake of Open Water 2: Adrift, Adrift follows six friends (and a baby) as they embark on a sailing trip that goes horribly wrong after they all jump into the water without lowering the yacht’s ladder. It’s an inherently engrossing premise that is, by and large, employed to hopelessly underwhelming effect by Sérgio Graciano, as the filmmaker, working from Tiago Santos’ screenplay, delivers a sluggish thriller that progresses at a snail’s pace and boasts a uniformly forgettable roster of protagonists – with, in terms of the latter, the movie’s heroes just about as bland and generic as one could possibly imagine (ie these people are, for the most part, completely interchangeable). There is, as such, little doubt that Graciano’s continuing efforts at generating suspense or cultivating a tense atmosphere fall hopelessly flat, which is particularly disappointing (and unforgivable) once the picture progresses into its increasingly perilous second half. (In fairness, the characters’ initial discovery that they’re unable to get back on board the boat is handled relatively well by Graciano.) Far more problematic, ultimately, is the repetitive bent of Adrift‘s third act, as the film becomes dominated by sequence after sequence of the surviving figures’ relentless bickering and in-fighting – which does, as a result, diminish the impact of the grim final stretch and cement the production’s place as a mostly tedious piece of work.

* out of ****