Dark Water

Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth

2005

Interesting how our movie genres also take on the aspect of their times. The horror genre, at least for this part of the first decade of the 20th century, is actually splitting into two parts: what I call the GoreFest, and the other I call the ShadowFear. (cheesily cool, I think) - the GoreFest is of course the Saw series, Hostel, etc, and the ShadowFear is like a scary Japanese Manga come to life - because it all stems from Japanese horror, such as The Grudge. Dark Water is definitely in that vein, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a direct adaptation from a Japanese horror film, because it has that same mood - slow moving, tension building (throughout the film, not just the 30 seconds leading up to the bloodbath) and the horror is more in what is just beyond the realm of sight rather than the person who is digging out your spleen with a rusty pickaxe.

Strangely enough, though, something about this movie didn't really hold it together for me - even though it had all the elements: a creepy building (singular location), odd characters (who is that maintenance guy, anyway?), a child ghost (those always scare the tar outta me!), and lots of is-this-real-or-a-dream. In fact, the only scary part was when the ghost was trying to "pretend" to be the real girl. That was a shocker.

But, all in all, the divorcing dad was not well-drawn, i.e. a terrible man in the beginning who suddenly becomes a great guy - not well done. John C Reilly's character was great but he was just your basic slumlord, not necessarily evil but more completely uncaring ("pay the rent and leave me alone" was how that character lived - like most landlords, eh?)

All in all, a movie honestly you can skip unless you are a fan of ShadowFear movies, then you can watch and compare with other like-minded souls the relative pros and cons to this one and Uzumaki or The Eye.

By the way . . . Uzumaki is best left in the cutout bin and the The Eye (the original Chinese 2002 film) is a must-see!!!

VG