gwnightscream Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane star in this 1989 thriller based on the novel. This tells about John (Neill) and Rae Ingram (Kidman), an Australian couple who decide to go sailing after their son dies in a car accident. Soon, they rescue a mysterious stranger, Hughie Warriner (Zane) who is the lone survivor of a nearby ship that's on the brink of sinking. John decides to check Hughie's ship and discovers that Hughie is a photographer who murdered the crew. Rae becomes trapped with Hughie and John desperately tries to rescue her. This isn't a bad thriller with tense and dramatic moments featuring a good cast. I recommend this.

Tweekums After a family tragedy Rae Ingram and her husband John, a captain in the Royal Australian Navy, sail their yacht though the peaceful waters of the South Pacific. One day, while becalmed, they sight a black schooner that appears to be heavily damaged. A man from the boat is rowing towards them. They help him aboard and he tells them that they were sailing from Tahiti to Fiji when the other people on board were struck down by food poisoning and died leaving them alone. John is sceptical so while the man sleeps he rows over to the boat and discovers that something violent has occurred there. As he rows back the man wakes up and takes control of the Ingram's yacht leaving Rae unconscious and John struggling to get the schooner working again. When Rae recovers she is all alone with the man and he refuses to return for John; he is clearly unhinged and any attempt to go against him could be very dangerous.This is a very taut thriller with a great setting. Having all of the main action aboard a small boat on an empty sea creates a very claustrophobic atmosphere; there is nowhere to run to and no prospect of outside help. Nicole Kidman shines as Rae; it is easy to believe in her fear and desperation as well as in the choices she makes to keep herself safe. Billy Zane is terrifying as the stranger; there is no doubting how dangerous he is. Sam Neill also impresses as John even though he spends most of the film alone on the schooner trying to get back to his wife. The action isn't overly gruesome but it is gruelling at times. Inevitably it does get a bit melodramatic at times Rae is rather slow in going for various weapons aboard the yacht but that can be put down to dramatic licence; after all it wouldn't have been much of a film if she had defeated her attacker early on. Overall I'd definitely recommend to this to anybody wanting lots of tension and some genuinely scary moments.

SnoopyStyle Australian Naval officer John Ingram (Sam Neill) returns home to tragedy. His wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) was driving to pick him up when she crashed killing their infant son. After her recovery, they get away from the world by sailing a yacht. She is haunted by the loss. They encounter troubled Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane) rowing a boat over to them in the middle of the ocean. He claims his boat is adrift and the others dead. John is suspicious and rows over to the boat.It is a Hitchcockian thriller. There is great tension from the moment Billy Zane first step on their boat. He has great creepiness and danger. Sam Neill is a solid lead. It's the first movie that I saw Nicole Kidman in and she was a revelation. It's a sparse movie but deadly. There is a weird ending that is almost dreamlike in its unreal feel unlike the rest of the movie.

zetes An excellent, sparse thriller. I think it'd be one of the greats if not for the opening and closing sequences. The opening one, about Nicole Kidman's and Sam Neil's loss of their son, could have easily been explained with dialogue - or not, since it never really comes back up again and only serves to slightly inform the audience of their emotional state. It compromises the rest of the film, though, which is set at sea. Kidman and Neil are on a long sailing trip when they come upon a stalled yacht. Before they even have much of a thought about it, a young man (Billy Zane) rows over to their boat as quick as his muscles will guide him. He claims that everyone else on the boat died of food poisoning and that it's now sinking, but Neil doesn't buy it. When Zane falls asleep, he rows over there himself and finds that everyone else has been murdered. Zane wakes up while Neil is gone and commandeers his own boat - and kidnaps his wife. Neil, an experienced sailor, fixes the other yacht and chases after them. Man, this is tense stuff, and all three of the actors are brilliant. It's too bad about that final sequence, which harms the movie far more than the unnecessary opening sequence. Supposedly test audiences reacted badly to the original ending, so they had to wrap it up more neatly in a bow, which just sucks. Well, I guess it's the film's only laugh, so there's that.