Synopsis
An Australian couple take a sailing trip in the Pacific to forget about a terrible accident. While on the open sea, they come across a ship with one survivor who is not at all what he seems.
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Cast
- Nicole KidmanRae Ingram
- Sam NeillJohn Ingram
- Billy ZaneHughie Warriner
- George ShevtsovDoctor
- Rod MullinarRussell Bellows
- Joshua TildenDanny
- Michael LongSpecialist Doctor
- Lisa Collins'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
- Paula Hudson-Brinkley'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
- Sharon Cook'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
Recommendations
- 80
The Telegraph
Cinematogapher Dean Semler gets amazing colours as the sun sets, and there’s a bravely avant-garde debut score from Kiwi composer Graeme Revell, pumping up the pulse with sinister breathing sounds. The plot even thrives on a tacit cultural tension between the Australian stars and the arrogant interloper. - 80
The Guardian
It’s Nicole Kidman who steals the show. Forced to endure the brunt of Hughie’s attacks, Rae is both cool and desperate, calculating and vulnerable, with a strange energy that feels young and tender but wise beyond her years. - 80
Time Out London
Director Noyce's bravura camerawork conspires with Terry Hayes' spare script (adapted from the novel by Charles Williams) and some edgy cutting to exploit every ounce of tension, right down to a killer ending. - 80
Variety
Though not always entirely credible, Dead Calm is a nail-biting suspense pic handsomely produced and inventively directed. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
Dead Calm generates genuine tension, because the story is so simple and the performances are so straightforward. This is not a gimmick film (unless you count the husband's method of escaping from the sinking ship), and Kidman and Zane do generate real, palpable hatred in their scenes together. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Though it lacks Alfred Hitchcock's wry and macabre sense of humor, DEAD CALM is a cracklingly good, cold-blooded film that never lets up in its truly Hitchcockian suspense. Under the gripping direction of Phillip Noyce, the film sustains tension and power beautifully, right through to its startling conclusion. - 75
Chicago Tribune
Though the film resorts to a hackneyed ending, what goes on before is modest but effective terror. [07 Apr 1989, p.A] - 60
Empire
Initially, the film works well as a tense, teasing suspense vehicle. But one of Dead Calm’s major problems is that it brings to mind ideas and plot similarities from so many other films that you are constantly being reminded of its own rather humble status.
