Open Water 3: Cage Dive

Aggressively terrible, Open Water 3: Cage Dive follows three friends (Joel Hogan’s Jeff, Josh Potthoff’s Josh, and Megan Peta Hill’s Megan) as they’re forced to fend for their lives after they’re left stranded in the middle of the ocean. It’s worth noting that Open Water 3: Cage Dive gets off to a reasonably decent start, as filmmaker Gerald Rascionato delivers a run-of-the-mill found-footage that is, at the very least, coherent and cohesive. And although the three central actors are distressingly devoid of charisma, Open Water 3: Cage Dive seems to be heading for a second half designed to echo the original picture’s atmosphere of despair and bleakness. There’s little doubt, though, that Rascionato simply isn’t interested in cultivating any real suspense or terror, as the movie’s found-footage conceit paves the way for a distressingly incomprehensible second half – with the production eventually devolving into a series of dimly-lit arguments and screaming matches. The special effects are admittedly far more accomplished than one might’ve anticipated, and yet this isn’t enough to compensate for what’s mostly an arduous, interminable slog to an inevitable conclusion.

* out of ****