Marea letal

I liked Darktide mainly because of it's camera work and portrayal of the Great White shark.

The underwater camera work appeared to be original and was impressive in terms of continuity, unlike most shark films where footage is borrowed from a documentary and pasted in.

The behaviour of the sharks is also more realistic, showing that people with experience can swim with them outside the cage and not be attacked.

The film is let down by a thin plot and bland characters.

I would rate this as the third best shark movie after Jaws(obviously) and The Reef(underrated).

I suppose I can give Dark Tide some credit for its realistic, non manipulative depiction of the great white shark. This is certainly no monster movie. So what kind of movie is it then?

Dark Tide would have to qualify as an adventure drama, or rather an anti adventure drama. It seems that each time director John Stockwell goes seaward with a production, the movies get progressively worse. Into the Blue, was entertaining, but certainly dumb. Blue Crush, was dumb and unentertaining. This latest movie is just confused and almost devoid of any reason to watch it.

I return to my point about Dark Tide not being a horror film. So why then are the characters deliberately as uninteresting and obnoxious as the cast of any Friday the 13th sequel. Halle Berry is playing the kind of half-assed, adolescent role that I'm used to seeing Jennifer Lopez play. Dark Tide gives you an idea of how far she has fallen in the last ten years. She is sleeping with the fishes.

The movie lumbers along for a good hour, with nothing except the quality of its underwater photography (getting you nose to nose with twenty foot sharks) to keep you in your seat. The characters exchange lines of sloppy dialogue and do silly things, until it's time for distaster to strike, in the last half hour. It's fair to say that Stockwell manages to generate some suspense in the climax, but he stretches it out too long, and the camera work is disorienting.

The whole thing doesn't work. It lacks direction, intelligence, and professional acting. For all I know, Dark Tide may just have been an excuse for Stockwell to go diving in South Africa with the sharks and leave the storyline behind.

This is one of the worse movies I have ever seen. The cast is absolutely horrible. The acting is horrible. The plot is horrible. Don't waste a minute of your time on this movie.

i actually really enjoyed this,if you like the ocean you like great white sharks then this is perfect for you.The acting is pretty decent,the cinematography is really good i'm mean it looks absolutely real!o.k maybe these guys were asking for trouble,but then again there are people that do this everyday out in South Africa and i bet if you talked to every single one of them they could tell you of some seriously close calls,after all you are dealing with the oceans second top predator.(and even though sharks mistake us for food as we are not their usual prey,rogue sharks do exist and have to be killed it happens all over the world so anyone that says sharks don't blindly attach humans are misinformed...anyway)I though it was better than Open Water both one and two and if think there's been loads such as adrift etc etc.The action is great there is some emotional depth between the two main protagonists and to me it seemed like a very enjoyable film.I'd give it a 6.6 out of ten.i thoroughly enjoyed it.Check it out for yourself.

The reviews who say that this movie is bad, boring, and the characters are unlikeable simply expect a different kind of movie and have forgotten the joy in a drama with thrilling elements.

This is not "Mission Impossible: Panties in a Twist" or whatever the latest incarnation is. (And I do enjoy those!) This movie is is a character study, an abundance of beautiful cinematography, and a shark chasing thriller all in one. There is a sense of realism, especially with the interactions between the characters, who react in line with their own backstories- characters who are simultaneously heroic, anti-heroic, brilliant, and ridiculously self absorbed and stupid.

Additionally, Dark Tide perfectly captured the sense of sheer peace and quiet that consumes you once your head is below the waves in the open ocean. I've been scuba diving all over the world, and driven a boat like in this movie. The movie captured the sense of reverence in the water and for the water, and took me far away to reefs of my own past.

Is it thrilling? Absolutely- the action scenes were tense, and you felt the weight of the sharks gliding silently just inches away. Is it slower? I was never bored. I enjoyed the characters, flaws and all. In the end, if anything, I wanted more closure and final introspection. But that is the only thing I found lacking. If you remotely like the ocean and treat it as a thriller with a slower burn, you will enjoy the movie.

6 1/2 stars.