Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
A weekend cruise on a luxurious party yacht goes horribly wrong for a group of old high-school friends when they get stuck in the water many miles from shore and a happy reunion turns into a fight for survival.
Open Water 2: Adrift is a loose sequel that trades the original's minimalist shark-terror concept for a single-premise survival thriller: six people stranded in open water with no ladder back onto their yacht. The central hook is clever but the film squanders it with shallow characterization and repetitive tension cycles. Acting is serviceable but largely forgettable, with characters making frustratingly illogical decisions that undermine tension. Cinematography makes reasonable use of the open-water setting and captures claustrophobic helplessness reasonably well. The film is fairly derivative of its predecessor without meaningfully expanding the concept, and the bleak ending, while tonally consistent, feels abrupt rather than earned.