For Open Water 3: Cage Dive, the jerry-rigged franchise goes the found-footage route. With (not real) news reports and interview excerpts interspersed, the movie presents itself as a millennial trio’s ill-fated audition tape for the (also not real) Guts and Glory reality show. This been an Open Water entry (albeit after the fact), we get guts — the glory, not so much.
Our wannabe influencers are Josh; his brother, Jeff; and Jeff’s girlfriend, Megan. Jeff (Joel Hogan) even plans to pop the question to Megan (Megan Peta Hill, Broil) on the show, unaware she’s cheating on him … with Josh (Josh Potthoff). Oh, brother!
In addition to riding a roller coaster — wow, real daring there, kids — the audition tape includes a cage dive with sharks in Australia. All’s well until a Poseidon-lite tidal wave tips the boat over, sending all aboard tumbling into the salty bowl of broth known as the Pacific Ocean. Feeding time!
Sharksploitation cognoscenti deem Open Water 3 to be lackluster, but I disagree. While the movie isn’t exactly swimming in originality, director Gerald Rascionato (2021’s Claw) uses found footage organically rather than a gimmick; furthermore, he stages a couple of solid jump scares and an equal number of extended scenes of unease.
I suspect Cage Dive’s negative numbers largely derive from viewers’ annoyance with the vapid narcissists at its chewy human center. Make no mistake: They are annoying, but isn’t that how it should be? Ever since the original Open Water showed moviegoers that even the protagonists we like have no chance to see shoreline again, isn’t their demise the specific appeal of the sequels? (Call it the Voorhees effect.) Something tells me Rascionato agrees — to be clear, that “something” is the scene in which Megan accidentally kills an innocent person with a flare. —Rod Lott