Dead Calm is a movie that works on two common fears – alone in the middle of the ocean while something bad happens and the realization that no one will come to help you in time.
Sam Neill plays John Ingram, a captain in the Royal Australian Navy, and his younger wife, Rae (Nicole Kidman), are somewhere near the Great Barrier Reef on a yacht. They’re out in the middle of nowhere following the death of their toddler son which died during traffic accident that left Rae injured. With them is their furbaby, Ben, a Scottish Terrier.
One day, Rae thinks she sees something off in the distance near the horizon. It’s a schooner and there’s a man (Billy Zane) in a dinghy rowing frantically toward them. When they help him abroad, he’s erratic and disheveled. He says he’s Hughie Warriner and he is the sole survivor of the ship, the Orpheus, where everyone else died of food poisoning, most likely botulism. However, John is cautious. Hughie says he was adrift for 10 days before going to sleep.
John decides to row over and see for himself what happened. Of course this is one of those movies that could’ve been over if John used the yacht’s engine. He locks Hughie in the room and there’s a shotgun and speargun on board as well as flares which will become crucial.
But I think the movie works on our natural instincts to trust people but also question them. When I was home from college, I was approached by a man at a gas station who said he was supposed to be at work but had car engine problems. He didn’t bother to call a tow or even show me where his car was. He said he was about four hours late for work and needed a ride over to the industrial park a couple of miles away.
Yet I immediately doubted his story. He’d been walking around the gas station area for hours. If he was late, why not call a boss or coworker? People use these stories sometimes to scam people.
And you don’t become a high ranking naval officer without being too cautious. So John rows over and finds the ship eeriely in disarray. It’s slowly sinking but the rest of the people on board didn’t die of botulism as John discovers their bodies mutilated.
Also, home video Hughie apparently shot shows an older Aussie getting angry at him a lot. Back on the yacht, Hughie awakes and manages to get out of the cabin and subdue Rae before John can return.
Rae must try to out think Hughie as he has turn on the engines and has the yacht moving away from the schooner.
Dead Calm is based in a 1963 book of the same name by Charles Williams. Orson Welles attempted to adapt it in the late 1960s but production ceased with many scenes not shot. Filmmaker George Miller worked with Welles’ estate to buy back the rights.
Zane Says 