Things I watched: Dead Calm - An unsettling psychological thriller set on the high seas

Dead Calm came onto my radar in a fairly roundabout way. 

I was watching old YouTube footage of Orson Welles interviews and stumbled across mention of an unfinished project of his called The Deep, based on a novel by Charles Williams. The film sat in limbo for decades before finally being adapted into something else entirely by Philip Noyce.

It’s not Welles’ vision, but it is a taut, nervy thriller in its own right.

The story follows a young couple, played by Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman, sailing across the Pacific in an attempt to escape a recent family tragedy. Their journey is interrupted when they encounter a sinking schooner and a lone man rowing desperately toward them. He’s sick, agitated, and quickly taken aboard.

That turns out to be a mistake.

Suspicion builds fast and before long he seizes control of the yacht, taking Nicole with him and leaving Sam stranded aboard a doomed vessel. From there the film splits neatly in two: Sam fighting to survive at sea, and Nicole trapped in a tense psychological standoff with an increasingly unstable captor.

What really elevates it is the setting. The ocean is vast, hostile, and isolating, turning the yacht into a floating pressure cooker. The claustrophobia is intense, and every decision feels loaded — especially the repeated moments where Nicole hesitates over loading a gun that could end everything instantly.

Would Orson Welles have approved? Hard to say, but I did. The film blends psychological horror with survival thriller remarkably well. The ending is poor — reworked by the studio months after shooting — but if you mentally discard it, what remains is 90 minutes of gripping, economical filmmaking.

In my opinion, a genuinely underappreciated gem.