It’s all about the water this week as all four major releases deal with the magical hydrogen-oxygen concoction either on an intimate (Open Water, Without a Paddle) or slightly less obvious manner (Garden State’s screaming/garbage bag/rain kiss, and Exorcist: The Beginning and its life-affirming holy water).

Let’s start with Open Water, a film made for around $200,000 which looks like a film made for around $210,000.  Its running time is shorter than a super-sized episode of ER, and its premise is swiped from the episode of The Simpsons where Bart and Lisa get left behind during a school field trip to Capital City (“If I can't rely on the buddy system, I don't know what to believe in anymore”).  In Water, two big city workaholics take some time off to relax down in the Caribbean.  Susan (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel (Daniel Travis) sign up for one of those deep sea scuba dive things and have the time of their lives checking out underwater life.  When they surface, their boat is gone and they’re in the middle of nowhere, miles from land even they were able to tell which direction terra firma might be.  And then the sharks come.

Water’s setup takes about 25 minutes, and we never really see Susan and Daniel in any danger until the 60 minute mark.  That’s a long time for something over less than 20 minutes later.  And don’t be sold by that whole Jaws meets The Blair Witch Project line, either.  Water just isn’t that scary, unless maybe you’re the kind of tool who actually partakes in the aforementioned underwater shenanigans (in which case, you deserve to be terrified and then eaten by sharks).  I guess the BWP comparison makes sense because both films were produced for very little money, but beyond that, it’s just silly.

The acting is beyond stilted, and the direction amateurish (you get what you pay for, I guess), but the idea that a film this close to becoming a Samuel Beckett play (particularly Happy Days) is finding its way to the multiplexes makes me laugh.  Out loud.  Oh, and by the way, Water is rated R for Ryan’s nude scene – not coma-inducing psychological terror, or anything.  It’s also supposed to be based on a true story, or “inspired by real events,” or some such nonsense.  If that were true, then 90% of the film would be total conjecture.  And that’s even more than Monster.

Water is a lukewarm recommend, but you should get up and run if you see Without a Paddle coming your way.  Continuing to prove he’s as inconsequential as a shortstop making actual physical contact with second base while he’s turning a double-play, director Steven Brill (Mr. Deeds) again flounders without a Sandler-like talent in front of his camera.  The film is about three D.B. Cooper-obsessed Gen Xers who, upon the death of a friend, decide to have themselves a little adventure on and around the Spirit River in Oregon.  Dan (Seth Green), Jerry (Matthew Lillard) and Tom (Dax Shepard) were childhood best friend who have each taken different paths in terms of career (doctor, corporate whore, sextician) and sociological quirks (uptight, compulsive liar, commitment-phobic).  But like my old Aunt Asshole used to say, there’s nothing like a canoe trip to rekindle a friendship.

Before long, our triptych of heroes are having all sorts of trouble with the dreaded Three Ns of Whitewater Rafting Trips (nature, navigation, and Ned Beatty fuckers), proving that people who take these kinds of vacations also deserve to be shark snacks.  Paddle can’t decide whether it wants to be a slapstick-y, gross-out comedy, or a heartfelt Stand By Me-meets-Deliverance drama.  And it ends up being neither.  Still, you have to give mad props to a company (Viacom) that uses its television network (CBS) to force the contestants of its big reality show (Big Brother) to watch their smelly August release and praise it like feet don’t fail me now.  That would be like a concentration camp agreeing, as a whole, that the moldy bread is deliciously fantastic (as opposed to, like, no bread).

I’m starting to get sick of the “coming home” motif in both film and television, but Scrubs’ Zach Braff does it up right in Garden State, his surprisingly assured debut as a writer and director.  In State, Braff plays 26-year-old Andrew Largeman, a disconnected waiter at a Vietnamese restaurant in Los Angeles who returns home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral.  Andrew, a struggling actor who has been heavily medicated since childhood thanks to his shrink father (Ian Holm), hasn’t been home in nine years and initially has trouble connecting with his old pals, whether they’ve become millionaires or they make ends meet by robbing the dead.

Hardly sounds like a comedy, eh?  It gets worse when Andrew meets and falls for an epileptic compulsive liar (Natalie Portman) with a hamster-obsessed mother and a brother right from the pages of a Sally Struthers commercial.  You want laughs?  Wait until you find out how Andrew’s mom died.  You’ll laugh yourself right over the edge of a cliff.

On paper, State might sound like a train wreck, but Braff manages to keep the dark content surprisingly light (but not, like, Danny Deckchair light) thanks to a full slate of likable yet extremely flawed characters, a slew of smart sight gags (including the funniest medical waiting room scene since Lost in Translation) and an even smarter soundtrack.  The acting is all quite solid, and it’s refreshing to see Boys Don’t Cry’s Peter Sarsgaard play grimy again after cleaning himself up for Shattered Glass.

I expected the worst from Exorcist: The Beginning for a myriad of reasons (the other Exorcist sequels sucked, and this one has been sitting around on a shelf for well over a year) and was mildly surprised when it didn’t stink up the joint.  In that regard, you can call it the Queen of the Damned 2004.  The Beginning is a prequel, actually – set in 1949 Kenya, where a young Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård, King Arthur) has his original encounter with The Big D.  And I ain’t talking about diarrhea, kids.

The whole Merrin thing was probably lost on the folks I saw The Beginning with, since none of them were alive when the original Exorcist film was released (you know, back before priests were despised).  There were a handful of nice connections between the two pictures, and also some things directly borrowed (or “inspired by”) the first.  Like a possessed kid, a priest full of doubt in his faith, and a certain statue that made me piss the bed when I was little.  But there is new stuff, too.  Like a love interest (Izabella Scorupco, Reign of Fire), World War II flashbacks, and babies made completely of maggots.

Fans of The DaVinci Code who can’t wait for the film adaptation of Dan Brown’s book might have some fun with The Beginning.  Its main character is an archeologist-slash-expert in religious iconography, and its story revolves around Vatican cover-ups and conspiracies.  Fans of Freddy vs. Jason might dig it, too, since the possessed individual in this one runs around killing people in the final act.  Is it just me, or did the Devil-Regan’s reach not seem quite as long?