Buy it... only if you are interested in the archival collection of hymns, chain gang songs, and blues music that serves as the source material for the film.

Avoid it... if you are expecting anything even remotely interesting from Graeme Revell's extremely simplistic and drab electronic contribution to the film and album.

Revell

Open Water: (Graeme Revell) Chalk up yet another movie in the "Who the hell would want to pay to see this?" category. With its gruesome plotline widely publicized during its initial release, it's safe to say that Open Water is based upon the true story of Queensland's Great Barrier Reef Tragedy. Vacationers Tom and Eileen Lonergan went on a diving expedition with 26 others on a charter vessel owned by Outer Edge Dive Company from Australia in January, 1998. While the Lonergans were still scuba diving, the other 24 participants had quickly completed their dives and re-boarded the vessel. The captain of the boat, Jack Nairn, neglected to do a head count and just assumed that everyone had boarded (there are reports that he was in a hurry to get back to a party at the port). With the Lonergans innocently stranded at sea and with no discovery of their absence made for two days, they were left to die gruesomely in shark-infested waters. Nobody should be fooled about the outcome of the events in this film, but the intentionally low-budget production of the picture, including the use of a home video digital camera to shoot the film, managed to create the variety of The Blair Witch Project hype that billed the project as an independent entry to watch in the late summer of 2004. Critical response to the film was somewhat positive, with the play upon phobias seeming to work on hardened critics. Responses from audiences, however, was much more varied, with complaints about the film's obvious and terrible outcome coming from viewers who felt in need of a nice walk in the park after seeing such a downer. Others have stated that the 87-minute film is an unqualified bore, and perhaps some margin of blame for such criticism rests on the shoulders of composer Graeme Revell. While the veteran had already written a few ambient soundscapes in his prior assignments, nothing could prepare his collectors for just how minimal Open Water turned out to be, especially when coming on the heels of something as dynamic as The Chronicles of Riddick. It's the type of job for a composer of Revell's stature that arguably diminishes his reputation, because so little effort seems to have gone into his approach for the music. If you could choose the most boring and basic samples existing in the man's library at the time, all of the worst of them were applied to this score.

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Undoubtedly, Revell's music for Open Water is about as simplistically structured as any he has ever written, blending the lines between music and ambient sound design during its entire length. Composed and programmed for a performance by just one artist at the synthesizer, Open Water has very little noteworthy material of which to speak. The most interesting aspect of the score is that Revell made no attempt to develop an emotional arc in the narrative to hide the outcome of the expedition. The music drones without character before dive just as much as it does as the primary characters are torn apart. There was definitely no inspiration from music like George Fenton's Deep Blue in the scenes before everything goes wrong, allowing absolutely no element of surprise for those unfamiliar with the plot and reducing the dichotomy between the first and second halves of the film. Only a couple of subtle deviations from the music's monotone electronic droning can be discussed. First, Revell uses the chopping of a helicopter blade to represent the arrival of the sharks. As they close in for the kill in "Sharks Circle," Revell presents a slow banging of a drum to signify death. Otherwise, the only break from the constant, dull brooding is the short blast of drums heard as the discovery of the couple's absence is finally realized. Revell's score on album is less than twelve minutes in length, and his material is supplemented by one useless cue by Yoav Goren and Jeff Fayman, the totally non-descript "Dive Boat Leaves the Site," as well as a collection of hymns, chain gang songs, and blues music that serves as source material for the region. The use of the latter collection of music in the film accentuates the fact that these two city-dwellers stranded in the ocean couldn't be further from home and are not surprisingly more effective than the score. On album, the songs' varying tones of spirit, including a significant amount of archival sound, differs extremely from the drab style of Revell's portions. The Indonesian girls' choir in "Yendisare Aimando" is perhaps too celebratory compared to what follows, but its beauty easily represents the highlight of the album. The product is a rare case in where the source songs are superior to the score in every instance, and Revell's music is so bland that these songs are the only reason to purchase the Open Water soundtrack. The lack of imagination in Revell's work here far outweighs any effectiveness that he was hoping to achieve through his intentionally droning and singular approach. Skip the film and album and go straight to the nice walk in the park. *   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For Graeme Revell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.74 (in 19 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.74 (in 15,157 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.