MovieChat Forums > Open Water (2004) Discussion > In the end do they both die?

In the end do they both die?


the end was really confusinf for me. did both of them die?

-Sly Lover-
"Rambo isn't violent. I see Rambo as a generous contributor!"

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Yes they did

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but ok then how did Susan die?

-Sly Lover-
"Rambo isn't violent. I see Rambo as a generous contributor!"

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she was pulled into the water at the last minute of the movie, so the answer is eaten by sharks

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[deleted]

actually you are partially right,
I didn't notice that,

but, what the hell did she do? dive in to die ? weird, she should float up anyway

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I took it as she knew if the sharks that were circling didn't eat her there and then, one would at least bite and cause her to die from blood loss, as was the fate of Daniel. So, she abandoned her gear and, I guess, drowned herself before any of that happened.

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What he said. She drowned herself before the sharks got her. Stupidest ending I've ever seen in my life. 10 mins later a boat came by. lol!!

Worst movie ever. Even worse then Sorcerers.

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As a scuba diver, I would have likely done the same thing if I knew death-by-shark was imminent. More peaceful way to go on your own terms, instead of being eaten alive. She was already exhausted, dehydrated, weak, and possibly hallucinating a bit too. She simply let go.

After diving the Caribbean for many years, I felt it was portrayed realistically. I know about the mistakes that can be made and the fatigue that can set in. I've nearly panicked in risky situations without sharks. You learn to regulate your breathing (and pulse) to avoid it.

To be fair: if I wasn't a diver, I'm not sure how much I'd like it. Probably somewhat due to the suspense and imagination of the terror. However, as a diver I could feel the swells, my wetsuit and fins, legs getting tired, the jellyfish stinks, the saltwater in my mouth and cuts, smell the water, and the difficulty of viewing what's around due to limited movement with the BCD and tank.

Worst of all, the panic of being left behind is all too imaginable if you've ever lost sight of your dive buddy and group. I had to stay-put underwater in a dark, cold ocean (3 foot visibility) for what felt like an eternity. As trained, I knew to stay until they backtracked via compass. Thank goodness there was no drift, but my heart felt like it was beating in my throat even though I regulated my breathing. I could see nothing but dark water and shadows beyond myself. Worse case, I would have safely ascended when my air got low and performed the distressed diver signal. But they found me via an expert diver. I was a beginner with handful of dives...and a phobia of dark water. Lesson learned about strict buddy system in poor viz.

Anyway, the point is that I could basically relate enough to the mistake and fear. Also, the characters experience of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression was felt on my end and those of my diver friends who saw it with me. Those are the first four stages of grief. In the end, she succumbed to the 5th and final stage: acceptance.

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I felt like they left it up for interpretation whether she got eaten or dove under own her own to die, due to grief or something. I kind of figure with all of the sharks there she got attacked one way or another.

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She simply gave up and drowned herself, rather than letting a shark get to her first.

"It was a horrifying thought. Our once proud nation...shaped like a wiener dog."

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That's incorrect. She wasn't pulled under by a shark.. She mad a conscience decision to dive down and go so deep that she wouldn't be able to make it back up without taking in water. She chose to die. She saw the Sharks around her and the bevy of sharks feasting on poor Daniel's corpse. She saw how he died. She knew the end was near for her and she didn't want to go the way Daniel did, so she chose suicide by drowning.

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I disagree...I think bleeding out would be the more peaceful way to to die... drowning is one of the worse ways to go out.

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1. how do you know?
2. who cares? after you died, you won't remember how bad you suffered before that :D

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Because I've had sleep apnea and other sleep issues, and have woken up gasping for air several 100 times in my life...it's not pleasant.

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Right, that would be pretty close.

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Two people go diving, they get left behind, and they get eaten by sharks or drown.
No one really knows which, since no one survived, but it doesn't really matter.
That the extent of this craptacular story.

I'm gonna make a movie about a pedestrian that steps into traffic, get's run over and he dies.
Gonna be a great movie, fully worth the hour you'll be spending on it.

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Uhm, it's not a story, it actually happened.

Doug Roberts: What do they call it when you kill people?
The Towering Inferno

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Ok people, here's my theory...
The cover indeed says it's all based on a true story, but... shouldn't at least one of them have survived the drama? How can anybody now know what actually happened out there?
So besides the fact that nobody knows the real story since the boat left them, also the whole part at the beginning is unknown. For example the fact they planned their holiday in a hurry, they never talked about it with anyone.

So what I want to say is: you can like the movie or not, but please don't say it's based on a true story.

Ah, and to answer your question: yep: she died! She gave up because of the loss of her husband and once he was eaten by the sharks, she took off her gear (no more oxigen and now more "floating capacity" and let herself sunk to the bottom.

Greets,

milmafia

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Very very loosely based on a true story. Nobody knows how they died since there were no survivors. In real life they could have both been murdered at sea, died in some freak scuba accident or even ripped apart by sharks immediately and not have floated around for hours. I think the words "Based on a true story" is sometimes used in movies when it shouldn't be, and this is one of those times.

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I see what you both are talking about, but this still is based on what is known about the story, it doesn't say it IS the true story... it's based on the written board found by the fisherman, and on the loose equipments without marks of bites, suggesting they got rid of the equipments, maybe hallucinating on dehydration...

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Its based a true story about two people left behind on a scuba diving trip. It is BASED on a true story, its not THE true story. When someone says its based on a true story, it can mean just the concept. So yes this is based on a true story, even if what happens in the movie isn`t what actually happened to the two people from real life

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> ... and let herself sunk to the bottom.

You won't sink in salt water. Daniel didn't just sink either although he still had his weights on, he was obviously pulled down by the sharks.

Susan was not, and she even detached her weights earlier and took off her gear at last (as you wrote yourself), so there wasn't any comprehensible reason for her not to continue floating up.

Drowning yourself by just dipping below the surface is utterly arguable.

Therefore the end was as unrealistic as confusing as annoying. That nonsense ruined the whole thing :/

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Like all movies based on real events there's a degree of licence allowed and this movie appears to follow reasonably closely what occurred. The real life couple were called Tom and Eileen Lonigan (I saw a documentary about it last month) and they were indeed left stranded due to a counting error on the diving boat. It's believed that they may have died of dehydration or, suffering from delirium, shed their wetsuits and drowned later due to exhaustion. It's not believed that they died of shark attacks because parts of their wetsuits were found and showed no sign of tears caused by shark bites but it wouldn't make a very good movie to watch two people dehydrate and die would it?

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The true story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan was covered in an episode of The Investigators (a series on TruTV) titled Deep Secrets:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1166368/

Here's the Wikipedia entry for them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_and_Eileen_Lonergan

Here are a few relevant snippets from that article:

"Several theories were suggested surrounding their disappearance. At the time, it was suggested that the Lonergans might have staged their disappearance. However, the Lonergans' bank accounts were never touched and their insurance policies were not claimed."

"Fishermen found a diver's slate (a device used for communicating underwater) and wrote down what it reportedly read: "[Mo]nday Jan 26; 1998 08am. To anyone [who] can help us: We have been abandoned on A[gin]court Reef by MV Outer Edge 25 Jan 98 3pm. Please help us [come] to rescue us before we die. Help!!!"

"The coroner dismissed suggestions that the Lonergans had either committed suicide or faked their own disappearance, and formally charged Jack Nairn, skipper of the dive boat, with their unlawful killing. He was later found to be not guilty, but his company was fined after pleading guilty to negligence."

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It is based on a true event. The couple were left behind in shark infested waters.

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Um, if they both died how do we really know how it happened?

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Did you miss the very end? Their camera was found. So at least it was assured that they both died in open water.

Since the place was known to be populated by sharks, all the rest is simple reasoning – and of course, partially fiction.

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A "story" is not necessarily fiction. That's why some are called "true stories".

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You bitch about movies online. You are not going to make anything.

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This was based on the true story of a couple named Tom and Eileen Lonergan who died at sea because they were forgotten during a scuba diving excursion.
This happened in 1998.
You need to come up with a true pedestrian story line.

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Not confusing both die, but she giving it up ahhh, the writer could have found some other way ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_cinema

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Absolutely my sentiments. The end suxx.

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At the end the sharks realized that she was a good person, so they all became friends and took her to their underwater city, where she became a mermaid and lived happily ever after.~

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The movie might not have been all that much, but the story itself is really creepy, specially since it's bases on real events. Just think about it, how something like this happened and put yourselves in the same position. The scene at the end portraits the horror, when she is surrounded by sharks until she just gives up. She was't pulled down, she looks around, sees all the sharks and just thinks "either they start eating me or i just drown myself". What would you do...?

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I think the guy was wounded, hallucinating, dehydrated and did get eaten by sharks. She did not want to be alone so being dehydrated herself she ended it by drowning herself.

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I agree with janny108 spot on

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"Based on true events" thing is used just to sell these horror movies.

They don't know a thing except that two people disappeared... then you can say every movie is based on true story, because something similar somewhere sometimes happened.

At the end the sharks realized that she was a good person, so they all became friends and took her to their underwater city, where she became a mermaid and lived happily ever after.~


Must be it!

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> She did not want to be alone so being dehydrated herself she ended it by drowning herself.

Drowning yourself by just dipping below the surface in salt water is nothing but ridiculous.

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Completely true. You can't drown in the ocean.

Are you watching closely?

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I'll be sure to pass that along to the Coast Guard and all the corpses they've pulled out of the ocean along the coast here.

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so what if she did like that james bond girl-- went underwater and just start swallowing and inhaling water.... i doubt very much she'd try to drown herself by going underwater and holding her breath until it ran out....

but anyways, yes i found this movie terribly awful and the ending was just as bad...

It's mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality...

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I doubt the character in this movie was mentally strong enough to swallow water on purpose, but maybe a combination of both would work if she went deep enough: holding breath until it runs out, then gasping for breath as a reflex action and by this inhaling water ...

However, my point was that just "dipping below surface" wouldn't suffice because of the higher ascending force in salt water.

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[deleted]

Thanks for telling me what I have written before
exactly in the post you have been replying to.

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[deleted]

Ideally, she should have (1) emptied her tank (maybe it was already empty) (2) taken off her BC (which she did) (3) leave her tank and belt on (took off tank). Even in salt water, she would sink.

The Anne Sellors fan club: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1856457/board/threads/

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Problem is: She neither had a tank, nor a belt or anything like this on.

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> At the end the sharks realized that she was a good person, so they all became friends and
> took her to their underwater city, where she became a mermaid and lived happily ever after.

This, at least, would have made some sense
The actual ending did not. So to sum it all up:

When Susan dipped below the surface this movie jumped the shark!



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yups,and became best friends with Ariel the little mermaid, as well as the infamous Sebastian the singing lobster!^-^

www.facebook.com.sharanelee

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yeh but did she use the weights on her (you know the weight of all the equopment etc) do drown herself? Ive been scuba diving once and this bloke adjusted a nozzle thing and literally out of no where i started sinkig real fast lol as it like affected all the 'support' or whatever. then he adjusted it again (as i was sinking) and i stopped sinking.

SO basically.. the weight of all the stuff you are carrying WOULD drown you pretty much straight away as it would just be too heavy

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The weights and tank/regulators will take you down unless the buoyancy jacket is inflated (that's what your scuba bloke was doing), but she removed her weights earlier and her jacket/tank at the end so she wasn't carrying any weight that would pull her down.

But hey, the 'giving herself to the ocean' was a nice image.

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[deleted]

They grew wings and flew away. You missed it.


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To OP: yes they both died. The man for obvious reasons and the woman most likely eaten alive.
For all other posters who complained about the unrealistic facts in the movie:
it is impossible for someone to drown oneself on purpose! Impossible! When you face the reality of death, adrenaline kicks in and you unwittingly fight back, always! That is why suicidal survivors usually say they regretted their decision seconds after it: adrenaline kicks in. Even if she decided to drink the watter to drown, she eventually would have stopped and tried to save herself.

But, you are all missing the point: she tried to gain control over her certain death! the movie was about the stages of dealing with the reality of death, as some other member has posted (euromarkusx: link to post: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374102/board/thread/161705676). Accepting your certain death and trying to have control over HOW it will happen is the last stage. And that is what she did.
So, she did die! the how doesn't matter.

P.S.: anticipating some people who always go against the grain: yes, the adrenaline kick doesn't work if you are utterly exhausted, suffering from hallucinations, or have hudge physical injuries, which none apply to this movie.

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I was under the impression that the film in the camera was developed and the authorities had a pretty good idea of what happened to them. Being alone out on the ocean would be horrible, I felt for them both.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Let's not ask for the moon, we have the stars".

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Love the idea that she went away with the sharks and became best friends with Ariel and Sebastian! Would've been a whole lot better and whole lot less depressing than the film I saw!

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