The Dive Review

The Dive is a remake of the Swedish survival thriller, Breaking Surface. This film looks at the peril of scuba diving and the troubled relationship between two sisters.

May (Louise Krause) and Drew (Sophie Lowe) are sisters who go on a scuba diving trip every year. This year they go to a location where they used to dive with their father. After an argument between the sisters they become separated and May gets trapped 28 meters underwater after a rock slide. It’s up to Drew to find a way to rescue May.

In recent years there has been a rise of small-scale survival-thrillers. Fall was a surprisingly successful film and a sequel has been commissioned for Netflix. There have also been films like The Aeronauts and Horizon Line which have shown characters stuck in the air. In The Dive case, one of the characters was trapped deep underwater.

What all these films have in common is having a small cast and a story that can be boiled down to ‘whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.’ In The Dive, it became so farcical. An example of this was when Drew had to get the car jack from the car. The car keys were trapped as there had been a rock slide so Drew had to look for another way into the boot. The film needed to ensure there was dramatic tension but only so much should go wrong.

I have generally been underwhelmed by survival thrillers like the aforementioned films. This is due to the limited setting. The Dive was able to escape this pitfall since Drew was able to go out of the water and explore the local surroundings. She could go to a local landmark to find help or tools and search the area for anything useful. The Dive also benefitted from a sense of urgency. Drew didn’t have time to wait for the emergency services. This time crunch added to the tension since there was none to waste and Drew clearly felt the stress.

The Dive was a film that didn’t waste any time. The film introduced May and Drew driving to a bay, there wasn’t any prologue or setup like in other survival thrillers, yet The Dive was still able to show the tension between the pair because of their strained attempts at conversation and their contrasting approaches to their preparations. This gave The Dive an extra narrative element since it wasn’t just a story of surviving an accident, it was about two sisters repairing their relationship. It gave The Dive more emotion than was usually expected from these types of films.

The Dive was only 90 minutes long but it still felt stretched out. There was only so much that could be done with Drew diving up and down and looking for ways to save her sister. The filmmakers attempted to add to the material with attempts at spiritualism with May having flashbacks to her youth and saying she was trapped for a reason. She was pretty much saying ‘it was God’s plan.’ This spiritualism had a physical manifestation which was Drew going to a church in the vein hope of finding help or tools. The film also had some plot cul-de-sacs that added to the feeling of the film trying to make sure it had a cinematic runtime.

The Dive only had three characters and five cast members. It seemed like the film was made during the pandemic and a small cast would have kept the cost down. The filmmakers did invest in underwater photography which was impressive. It added to the comparisons with Fall, filmed high up in the air, while The Dive was filmed deep underwater. However, the flashbacks of May and Drew swimming with their dad reminded me of The Simpsons when Marge remembered her Aunt Gladys.

The Dive worked best as a family-driven survival thriller. It had a solid core because of the central relationship but suffered from narrative contrivance.