Plot Summary
A couple, Australian naval officer John Ingram (Neill) and his wife Rae (Kidman), lose their son in a car crash. John hopes that some time alone will help Rae, who was driving the car, cope, and the couple head out for a vacation alone on their yacht. In the middle of the Pacific they encounter a drifting boat that seems to be taking on water. A man, Hughie Warriner (Zane), rows over to the Ingram's boat for help. He claims that the boat is sinking and that his companions have all died of food poisoning.
Suspicious of Hughie's story, John rows over to the other ship, leaving Rae alone with Hughie. Inside, John discovers the mangled corpses of the other passengers and video footage indicating that Hughie may have murdered them in a fit of insanity. John rushes back to his own boat but is too late as Hughie awakes, knocks out Rae and sails their yacht away, leaving John behind.
As John attempts to repair Hughie's ship from sinking and catch up with them, Rae awakens and tries to convince Hughie to go back for her husband. Hughie denies her request and keeps on sailing, alternating between kindness and bouts of rage as he attempts to charm Rae despite her insistence on turning the boat around. John manages to get through to his wife on the radio, but the water damage makes him unable to reply save for clicks on his receiver. He can only respond to her suggestions. John assures her that he is following close by. Rae tries to stall the yacht by turning off the engine and tossing the keys overboard. Her dog jumps in to retrieve the keys and bring them back as he did with his fetch ball. Hughie starts the yacht back up and persuades Rae to be friends with him. Rae accepts to build back his trust. After a while Rae goes back to contact John. She soon learns that the damage to Hughie's boat is too far gone and will sink in the next several hours. With John unable to come to her rescue, Rae realizes that she alone must act and save her husband. Before she has a chance to assure him the wreckage cuts John off from Rae and the radio shorts out. Unable to get a response from him Rae has an emotional breakdown.
Hughie comes down finding Rae in tears. He moves in closer hoping to soothe her. Desperate to gain control of the boat, Rae devises a plan to take advantage of his desire for her. She seduces Hughie on the floor and then stalls their foreplay by telling him that she has to go use the bathroom. In reality, Rae heads up on deck to assemble the shotgun. Impatient, Hughie gets up to look for her. However, just before Rae has a chance to load the shotgun her dog shows up and begins to bark drawing Hughie's attention to her whereabouts. In a panic Rae leaves the gun behind and grabs nearby cigarettes as an excuse to be on deck telling Hughie they are for later. She then proceeds to kiss Hughie and take him to bed with her as a means of luring him away from the deck. The dog later shows up in the bedroom watching as Hughie moves on top of Rae. She quickly makes an excuse to take the dog back on deck so she could finish loading the gun, but Hughie successfully orders the dog to leave before Rae has the chance to get out of bed. Unable to think of a way out of her predicament, Rae gives in to Hughie's advances and the two have sex. Afterwards, she sits on her bed feeling guilty and pushes forward with another plan to bring him down. She fixes them some lemonade, putting a heavy dose of her prescription sedatives into his drink. As a fierce storm comes on, Rae and Hughie come to blows, with Rae eventually shooting Hughie with a harpoon gun and knocking him unconscious. She then sets Hughie adrift in the boat's life raft and sails back to rescue John. Meanwhile, the damage and the storm have caused the other boat to sink almost completely. John swims out of the boat and sets the debris on fire, attracting the attention of Rae, who rescues him from a piece of floating debris.
After John's rescue the couple find the life raft and Rae shoots it with a flare, setting it on fire. The next day they are relaxing on deck when John takes a break from washing Rae's hair to prepare breakfast for her. Her eyes closed, Rae feels a pair of hands begin massaging her scalp and assumes it is John, but when she opens her eyes she sees a bloody Hughie, who tries to strangle her. While Rae struggles, John arrives from below deck. Seeing her being attacked, he shoots Hughie in the mouth with a flare, killing him.
Read more about this topic: Dead Calm (film)
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