Where's all the suspense + tension that everyone's talking about?

I just finished watching the movie myself and I couldn't agree more. I found it a total chore to get through this, and I'm normally a big fan of Polanski. His films are almost always deliberately slow-paced, but the difference between this and films like Chinatown or Rosemary's Baby, is that in those films there was always something introduced early on in the story that would intrigue the viewer, and it would continue to slowly develop from that point forward in which the stakes would progressively raise. I found no such element in this movie.

I didn't know what I was supposed to latch onto, or what I was supposed to feel suspense for. For the vast majority of it, it's simply three people on a boat who are socializing with one another, but nothing about it feels out of the ordinary. Nothing in the movie gave me a sense that something about the situation they were in didn't feel right. If anything, the suspense in this movie was comprised of the anticipation for anything remotely interesting/conflictual to actually happen, and by the time such an event did occur, I had absolutely no reason to care.

I cut Polanski some slack for the fact that this is an early work from him and he was probably still trying to find his style as a filmmaker - and I'll give him that. The way he eventually became a master of slow-pacing to build to an explosive climax is something to me that defines him as being one of the greats, and it's present in this movie to some degree. But I feel like almost every element that was introduced in the climax of this film would have been more servicing to the story if it had come into play much earlier. This really strikes me as a movie that people say is great because it's an early work from a legendary director. But based on the actual content of the movie, it's completely lost on me on how anyone would remotely feel any sense of suspense from watching this. What makes these people worth caring about and what on earth is inherently suspenseful about three people on a boat together? So they don't know each other and the stranger carries a knife. Big deal.

Illusions Michael. Tricks are something a whore does for money.

[deleted]

I agree with the majority here. I expected something more thrilling. I will acknowledge that it was well directed by Polanski and well shot, and the story and characters took some unexpected turns. But it was all so slow, uneventful, and pointless. The problem here is with the script. It's not so much that little happens, but that there's hardly any suspense or even foreboding from watching two men nag at each other for an hour. The climax is well framed, but it's all too little, too late. I gave it a 6/10 but recognize its display of Polanski's potential as an arthouse-thriler director. Still, Dead Calm was better.

I thought the ending elevated the film overall for me. The last 20 minutes or so were definitely the best part of it. I agree with others saying it was more of a drama than suspense though I went in expecting suspense too.

Although I do see where you are coming from I have to say that I really enjoyed it after seeing it for the first time tonight. I guess I liked the concept of picking up a hitchhiker and the tension that that automatically generates, because he could be anybody of course. A risk is immediately taken. That, together with the title of the film and the early introduction of the knife somehow managed to hold my interest.

It also crossed my mind that the whole presence of the knife was meant as some sort of practical joke to the 'gun in the drawer' rule in filmmaking (that if a gun is shown at some point in the film, it will be used sooner or later). But that didn't actually happen, or at least not in the way we usually see a knife being used.

Not much actually happened the first hour, but a lot of lines were set up. Early on in the story, right after the couple picked up the hitchhiker, I already found myself thinking 'something is going to happen between her and the hitchiker'. The was a subtle exchange between them, and later on in the boat that was emphasized when he looked at her while pretending to search for the mosquito.

It may not be a spectacular story, but I just found the correlation between the characters interesting. I thought it was wonderfully shot too, and the way Polanski set up the scenes in his first film definitely showed his skills. A lesser director might not have pulled it off.

Yeah, Polanski has certainly directed more tense and suspensful things than this; it mostly surprisingly slack, really as the director didn`t appear to be terribly concerned with whipping up some more serious intrigue. It`s a good film still, of course, but not as remarkable as some would have you believe.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

Honestly I don't even get where you people are coming from. Though I suppose if you go into this expecting a thriller that could be disappointing and perhaps even a little disorienting. Let that be a lesson to you all, go into every film "expecting" absolutely nothing at all. Simply go into every film with a completely open mind and just let it unfold before you. Expectations ruin your life, not only cinema. Get rid of expectations as much as possible in every facet of your life, you will find a lot more joy I assure you. This is not a thriller at all, neither is it a suspense film in any major sense. The film to me however is nonetheless a very beautiful one, and it is clearly a meditation on male bravado and internal superiority complexes in general. It's a straight drama, and a great one! Sorry you people watched the film, but yet missed the whole thing.


My body's a cage, it's been used and abused...and I...LIKE IT!! [Evil2]

First - I did like this movie but suspense does not describe this movie one bit

Introduced on TCM by Robert Osborne as typical Polanski suspense & tension build-up, that is what I thought it was going to be... The only tension was between the two guys because one was being a punk but it seemed like things were fine soon after each incident.

The tension happened all at the end