DARK WATER (2002)

If you remember horror in the early 2000s, you remember one thing: j-horror.

Movies like Ring, Ju-on The Grudge and their many competitors and imitators and remakes flooded the western dvd and cinema market, making us finally aware that the scariest thing in the world is a 7 year old girl with wet black hair, when in actual fact it’s a 14 year old girl with an attitude.

Trust me.

Based on a book by Koji Suzuki, Dark Wayer was directed by Hideo Nakata, who directed Ring, Ring 2 and the western version of The Ring 2. This film could have very easily slipped into the series as it’s about a wet, trapped spirit of a young girl… they could have even named it Bore-Ring… but perhaps that is revealing my opinion of the film a bit too early.

Bore-Ring… I’m sorry, Dark Water starts by introducing us to Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki), recently divorced and a former sufferer of some PTSD issues due to very violent books she had been proof-reading for a publishing company.

Her and her daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno), move into a fairly awful apartment block, with a disinterested apartment manager that is in desperate need of some love, but there is something odd about their home.

Water seems to be perpetually leaking from the roof and a fairly ominous stain is creeping across the ceiling in one of the rooms, and more and more, an sense of something strange in the apartment starts to become more apparent, which starts with Ikuko finding a child’s handbag/ backpack.

What is the secret of the water that constantly seems to be in the apartment block, and why does Matsubara seem to be at the corner of the mystery? Is there a presence there, or is her poor mental health to blame?

Essentially this is a well made as any of these Japanese films of this era, and honestly, when it first came out I was desperate to grab anything from Madman’s Eastern Eye brand, a desperation that Hollywood must have felt as there is an entirely forgettable western remake directed by Walter Salles, starring Jennifer Connolly, Tim Roth, John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite which is so forgettable I actually falsely remembered that it was Demi Moore who played the Jennifer Connolly role, and when you consider my utter love of Jennifer Connelly you’ll understand just how unbearable that film was!

Now this film is well acted by the cast, and honestly the state of disrepair that the apartment block reveals a Japan that I never knew existed as everything always seems either very new and clean, or traditional and well-kept, but the building is almost a brutalist blight on the opinion that Japan presents itself in its media. I found that to be strange and exciting and does actually really set the tone of being wet and moist and clammy.

This is all supposed to reflect the themes of neglect and abandonment of a child and how it can effect their opinion upon the outside world, but the film moves at a snail’s pace, and I am one for a slow and deliberate horror movie, but it also has to be entertaining.

The problem with this film is it’s like an afterschool special version of a Japanese horror film, or even a Hallmark video version. It feels forced and schmatlzy in its tale and in the epilogue I found myself rolling my eyes and wondering if I should just go outside for a walk instead of enduring this.

A repeat watch of and of the Grudge or Ring films would have been a better option than watching this.

Extras:

Only trailers for Dark Water, Montage, Grudge, Volcano High, Yojimbo, Infernal Affairs and Seven Samurai.

Film: 3/10

Extras: 2/10

Rewatchability: 4/10

This DVD was purchased AGES ago from Video Ezy