The trailer to this film looked fantastic, so I was excited to see it. Two sisters go diving in a remote location, only for one to become victim from a rock slide that has her leg pinned at 100 ft. Battling low oxygen and the isolation, the sisters must find a way to free the one pinned and escape.

It was an okay film. All the under water stuff was pretty impressive and perhaps I would have enjoyed the film better if I had seen it in the cinema. I just found it dragged a bit for me and had my attention wavering at times. I stuck it through to the end and I am glad that I watched it. Would I bother again? No. But I'd say give it a go.

This German/Maltese story of 2 skilled sisters fighting to survive had me at 15 mins when a cloud of claustrophobia descended on me! Truly, I wished I had, had the moral support of a watch partner for this one! Certainly the definition of "Everything went wrong that could"!

The girls are real feeling people, unlike so many American movies. It's surprisingly well shot, with some impressive underwater footage. They used their low budget on all the things that mattered most! It will likely become one of my regular survival watches.

However, I gotta say this much. Male writers and directors of female survival movies seem absolutely obsessed with adding backstory trauma to their female protagonists. Can we ever, ever just have a female led survival movie written/directed by women for women, where we focus only on their survival, not their tragic pasts??

I'll give this male writing/directing duo this much - The Dive didn't, at least, involve the girls having betrayed each other ala The Descent, Fall, and so many other female led survival movies. This one seems to avoid at least the worst of tropes and male gaze! But yep. It still manages to somewhat fall into the trap of The Descent Phenomena more generally. I removed a half star from my overall feel. Cut the pointless trauma flashbacks next time!