Rating: D
Dir: Phil Volken
Star: Isabel Gravitt, Genneya Walton, Alexander Wraith, Dean Cameron
Eight minutes and forty-five seconds. That’s how long it took for Chris to pronounce a sentence of death: “No matter what happens to them, they deserve it.” Not going to disagree with her there. By that point, we had been introduced to Kaya (Gravitt), a Responsible Teenager™, largely bringing up her younger sibling, thanks to a dead mother and alcoholic father. Or possibly dead father and alcoholic mother. My attention may already have been wandering. Anyway, against her better judgment, Kaya agrees to join BFF Tessa (Watson) on a jetski trip with a pair of himbos. It was when one of them started live-streaming the trip, that Chris donned her black cap. It didn’t take long for her to be making “somewhat satisfied” sounds.
Yeah, there’s some careless jet-skiing, and before Chris can say, “told you so”, it’s all gone a bit fatal. The survivors, left bobbing in the water, are soon picked up by Ray (Wraith) and his boat. This is clearly not a good thing from the get-go, because he’s sporting that suspicious stubble, only worn by ne’er-do-wells. To nobody’s surprise – except the survivors – he turns out to be more of a threat than the shark-infested waters. Specifically, he is part of an organ trafficking ring, which usually deals in Haitian migrants. Who are he and his pet surgeon (Cameron) to decline a trio of healthy, young and dumb, involuntary donors, who just happen to float across their path?
Goddammit, if anyone in this film had two brain cells to rub together, it would be over in ten minutes. Beginning with Kaya telling Tessa she is not going to sail into international waters with two guys she has never met before. Or if Ray had not flunked Bad Guy Security 1.0.1, Kaya would not have been able to wander the ship, albeit with no sense of urgency, eventually finding a casually discarded, loaded spear-gun. It’s very much the kind of movie which will have you throwing things at the television. If your television is lucky, it will just be epithets. Kaya eventually escapes… or does she? Because the bad guys like to leave computers open and unattended, on websites displaying pictures of women, with SOLD graphics flashing over them. Sigh.
The doctor is probably the best thing about this, projecting a nicely creepy vibe as he calmly goes about his surgical business. Never a good sign, when someone is drawing “cut here” lines on your torso (top). But for every moment which gets over a sense of threat, there are multiple ones which will provoke a roll of the eyes. The end, for example, depicts an extended search and rescue operation, on which it feels like half the film’s budget went. While I suspect it was likely during some training exercise, it had me wondering what kind of health insurance policy Kaya possessed. Must be a good one, because those Medivac helicopters won’t pay for themselves. Either that, or I see a shit-ton of extra shifts at Cinnabon in her future.