I watched The Dive earlier today only to find out it’s a remake of this Swedish film. Normally I’d say, “Silly Americans always remaking movies…” but The Dive was a German film (in English)… so I guess we can blame Germany for once (ahem).

Breaking Surface is about two sisters diving in a remote location when one gets pinned under a rock. The other has to free her with oxygen levels running low.

This flick spends a solid fifteen minutes with the sisters before they dive so I understood and cared for them more than in the remake. Plus the filmmaking is genuinely better and more suspenseful… though not tremendously so. Plus there’s a couple additional suspenseful and disturbing moments that the remake shied away from.

Ignoring the comparisons now, it’s is a sticky situation film where we, as the audience, tend to wonder what we’d do in similar circumstances. The film provides solid, smart answers that are hard to argue with. It’s a solid version of one of these survival thrillers.

I loved the harsh Norwegian countryside… very cold and brutal to add contrast to the underwater scenes (and to make you realize how cold it must be under the waves). It’s a pretty gorgeous film just from a production value standpoint.

It’s also an economical eighty minutes with fifteen of those spent on character setup. There’s very little wasted time once they dive and I appreciate that since the biggest challenge with these kinds of movies is finding enough things for the characters to do.

Breaking Surface is a good, solid survival thriller. Since I saw it second, it can’t be as novel as its remake, but I see how this one’s better… and I can see why they made smart changes in the remake. Both are good… Breaking Surface is better.

Score: 80