There's a great amount of tension in this, which is mainly attributable to the inventive direction, interesting cinematography, and great editing. The writing is where the film falters for me. Kidman is great in this, but the character she plays seems pretty stupid. It takes over an hour for her to even consider using a weapon on this stranger, which she knew she had since the beginning of the film. She is given numerous chances to sneak up behind Hughie, injure him, and throw him overboard - which would be justifiable in this scenario. However, she never does anything close. At the very end she knocks him out and throws him on a blow up raft. It makes me a bit angry that she didn't do that sooner, as she had ample opportunity to. We never actually learn Hughie's motivation for going crazy or reason all the people in his ship died, (or why he possibly killed them). His character was severely underdeveloped. Additionally, his death was really cartoonish and didn't really fit.Since I'm an animal lover, anytime I watch a film with a dog in it, I always check to see if it dies on doesthedogdie.com so I can be prepared. So I knew from the beginning that the dog would die, and I was anticipating it for a while. Once it happened, I found it to be the most fake thing I've seen in a film in recent memory that I actually started laughing.Overall, the tension and acting worked really well in this, but there were too many distracting plot holes to be enjoyable.

Despite its age, I still see DEAD CALM as a pretty definitive seafaring thriller. To be more precise, it's a psychological thriller, one of many that were all the rage back in the late '80s and early '90s: FATAL ATTRACTION kick-started the sub genre, and there were many interesting choices along the way. For me, the two pinnacles of the genre are this film and THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE.The plot is deceptively simple, making use of just three actors. There's a loving couple, traumatised by events of the recent past, and a mysterious stranger hiding dark secrets. What follows is a hold-your-breath tense thrill-ride packed with twists and life-or-death situations. I loved the eerily isolated backdrop and director Phillip Noyce – who's made a career of edgy, dark filmmaking – makes perfect use of a small yacht to imprison his lead characters. The acting is also fine, which is a plus as if it hadn't been this film would have lost a lot of its charisma. Sam Neill is the sterling, never-give-up hero, and Billy Zane excels as the genuinely frightening psychopath, always retaining a hint of sympathy about him. But the film belongs to Nicole Kidman, who stars as the grieving woman forced to become a warrior to save both her husband's life and her own.Although I'm not a big fan of Kidman, I believe this to be one of her best performances, and it's hard to fault. She's fragile and gutsy, weak and powerful, all in the same breath, and watching her cat-and-mouse antics with Zane is what suspenseful filmmaking is all about. DEAD CALM is a classic thriller thanks to its pure simplicity.

This movie makes me wonder on how movies should be rated.. In terms of achieving its goal of being an intense, enjoyable thriller I have to admit that his movie gets 10/10. However, I can not really give it a 10/10 without being unfair to great deeper movies like "A beautiful mind","American History X" and so on. Anyways, sorry for the general wondering and let me get back to the point. The plot is nice and fast-moving, as it should be for a thriller, and it definitely has strong moments. In addition, the cast is literally fantastic. Sam Neil is a master when it comes to horror/thriller movies, Billy Zane also performs really well and the same goes for a young Nicole Kidman. Some of the effects looked a bit cheap but today's standards but it is not a special effect based movie anyways.

A mass-murderer (Billy Zane) kidnaps and seduces a young woman (Nicole Kidman) after leaving her husband (Sam Neill) to die on the vessel whose crew he has just slaughtered.This is a great thriller, and really gets to the heart of what makes thrillers work: vulnerability, desperation, isolation. There is so much tension and suspense here. We know as film-goers that things will probably turn out alright (because we all want that happy ending) but will we get what we want? The film has added gravitas because the three main cast members have all grown in stature since. Neill got big a few years later in "Jurassic Park", Zane really hit his stride in "Titanic", and Kidman was already known for things like "Days of Thunder" but this pushed her even further out there. So interesting to watch this now, three stars before their prime.