Scary And Smart

"Psychological or atmospheric horror is what's attracting audiences these days," says Roy Lee, the Korean American who sold The Ring and Ju-on to Hollywood. It attracts producers too, since atmospherics cost less than computer legerdemain. But you don't have to be Japanese to scare people smartly. You need only a potent idea and $200,000. That was the budget for Open Water, based on the true story of an American couple who were left behind on Australia's Great Barrier Reef by a scuba boat.

In the movie version, Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan) are on a Bahamas holiday when their dive boat leaves without them. A day and night in open water bring out all manner of monsters, not just sharks. And all manner of fears. As Susan says of the lurking creatures, "I don't know what's worse: seeing them or not seeing them." Just knowing the unknown may be near is dread enough.

"We absolutely did not set out to make a shark movie," says writer-director Chris Kentis, who shot the film with his wife, producer Laura Lau. "And we didn't set out to make a horror film." But it couldn't have been fun for the two leads. Travis and Ryan had to spend two days dangling in water surrounded by dozens of gray reef and bull sharks (and a few shark experts, who threw chunks of bloody tuna to the sharks to keep them nearby but not hungry). The mix of emotional intimacy and shark verite in this well-crafted indie effort makes for 80 minutes of aqua anguish.

"You have to credit M. Night Shyamalan for bringing horror back to the Hollywood mainstream," says Walter F. Parkes, the DreamWorks exec who produced the U.S. Ring movies and has optioned the Korean doomed-family epic The Tale of Two Sisters. "The Sixth Sense was beautifully shot, well written, with a mature approach to the genre." It also grossed $294 million at the North American box office. That number will scare up a lot of converts.

Shyamalan's latest exercise in mystery is set in a village as remote, quaint and full of foreboding as the Hobbits' Shire. The elders warn their young not to go into the woods, for there monsters dwell. For years a tense equilibrium has obtained; neither group invades the other's terrain. Suddenly there are raids and animal mutilations by the unseen creatures. Fear grips the village, but two of the young — Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) and his blind, beloved Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) — are bold and pure enough to confront the demons.

After The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, Shyamalan is practically a scientist of horror. "All the decisions are made in honor of the God of Tension," he says. "Raising the tension over and over and over and never letting you up." That means direction and misdirection worthy of Hitchcock. "Where you would normally cut, I don't cut, so now you're not sure of the rhythm of the movie, which makes you feel uneasy. Or the camera is moving just six inches over the course of three minutes — you're not sure why because you're not aware, but you're feeling somehow more tense. You can see the outline of a path that you know you are supposed to walk because you've walked it so many times. But you're getting lost in the woods."

The film's payoff raises more questions than it answers, which may be Shyamalan's intent in this political parable of fear. When the kids are let in on the fairy tale's secret, they are told, "Do your very best not to scream." That's a rule viewers of The Village need not obey.