Treading water

Reviewed - Adrift: Welcome to The Ticket's top tips. Unoriginal film-makers, why not deflect accusations of plagiarism by simply presenting your eerily familiar product as a sequel? Troy becomes Gladiator II. Poseidon becomes Titanic IV. Lady in the Water becomes Splash III. And so on.

A glance at the Internet Movie Database informs us that the producers of Adrift, a largely ineffective aquatic thriller, once dallied with the notion of titling their film Open Water 2. Sure enough, both films concern a number of young people floating fearfully in the open sea. Adrift has, to be fair, a slightly more intriguing high concept at its centre. The picture sees its ghastly heroes - most of whom fully deserve a lonely, watery death - jumping off a yacht only to discover that nobody has thought to lower the vessel's ladder. To add to the supposed tension, one of the party, thrown in against her will, has left her baby on board. Much paddling and more bickering ensues.

Anyway, somebody must have realised that Open Water, though a word-of-mouth success, was not enough of a phenomenon to inspire a franchise.

Hans Horn's slack film, financed largely in Germany, is therefore condemned to keep itself afloat, unaided by any returning fan-base. I don't much fancy its chances. The absurd debates on life and death, carried out while thrashing about in perilous waters, greatly strain credulity. The hollow performances will not launch any new careers. And, worst of all, there are no sharks. It is perhaps just as well they didn't call the picture Open Water 2. Putting such an entity into cinemas without marine carnivores would be like trying to screen a Rob Schneider film without providing vomit bags.