Movie: The Dive
Production Companies: Falkun Films, Film – und Medienstiftung NRW, Logical Content Ventures, Augenshcein Filmproduktion, MFG- Film, Logical Pictures, Protagonist Pictures, Filmforderung Hamburg Schleswig – Holstein
Director: Maximilian Erlenwein
Producers: Jonas Katzenstein, Maximilian Leo
Scriptwriters: Maximilian Erlenwein, Joachim Heden
Main Cast: Louisa Krause, Sophie Lowe
Release Date: 25th August 2023
Running Time: 91 minutes
Certificate: 15
Introduction
This underwater survival thriller attempts to do its own thing and something new, but ends up reminding you of better films you’d rather be watching.
Synopsis
When a deep sea diving exploration goes disastrously wrong, two sisters – May (played by Louisa Krause) and Drew (played by Sophie Lowe)- are forced to fight for survival when a landslide traps one of them far below the surface.
Analysis
What we have here is essentially ’47 Meters Down’ meets ‘127 Hours’ but nowhere near as good as that premise sounds; the film does attempt to replicate an Ariel shot similar to one we see in the latter film, which did work rather well. With a story that is a boring cliché of the genre (two central characters who seem to be growing apart but are still bound together through their love of diving and memories of their father- something very similar to a film I’ll mention later), the only redeemable factor consists of some handsomely crafted underwater cinematography that I personally struggled watching given my fear of open water. So at least it gave me a few shivers (thank god this wasn’t shown in IMAX).
But that is not enough to sustain a 90 minute thriller. For me at least, one of the primary plot points was a blatant ripoff from last year’s ‘Fall’ (a shockingly vertiginous thriller that I really like), so much so that it seemed as if they copy and pasted dialogue straight out of that and simply inserted it here. The writing and plot in general is just so boilerplate for this category of film- characters haunted by their past which we are reminded of every 5 minutes through flashbacks and clunky dialogue delivery- please do something different for once, I found it so unengaging.
Unfortunately, I did not find this anywhere near as gripping, claustrophobic or tense as it should have been and I have a suspicion it will come and go like the tide.
Overall Rating: 4.5/10- Below Average
Target Audience: 15+
Content Warning: Language
Recommendation: No
