Dark Water

Rating PG-13 Formats DVD Genre horror Starring Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott, Pete Postlethwaite Directed by Walter Salles Publisher Touchstone External Links Official Site

The success of 2002's The Ring, continues to inspire Hollywood remakes of Japanese horror films, though none to date has performed as well as that film. Dark Water starring Jennifer Connelly, is the latest of this trend to issue its DVD and is a remake of Hideo Nakata's Honogurai mizu no soko kara, which itself was based on a novel by Koji Suzuki. Fans of the genre will remember that Nakata and Suzuki are the team responsible for the "Ring" films.

We would expect Nakata and Suzuki to produce the best of this wave of horror-from-abroad, but Dark Water fails to deliver the supernatural willies that we have come to expect from such films.

Rather than submerging us in a world of ghosts and evil forces, Dark Water follows Dahlia's (Jennifer Connelly) struggle to raise her daughter, Ceci, during a difficult divorce. Mother and daughter are forced to move into a dump with bad plumbing. While Dahlia fights equally hard for custody and a plumber, Ceci develops an imaginary friend, which eventually is a cause of concern for Dahlia and her husband because of Dahlia's own history of mental imbalance.

Consistently, scenes that appear to be leading up to moments of supernatural horror are subverted by natural explanations. The first appearance of plumbing trouble turns out to be a prank performed by a couple of local hoodlums. Later scenes lead us to question whether the seemingly supernatural elements are not actually a product of Dahlia's traumatic past and current distress. While such derailments are acceptable, and even highly effective in better films, they amount to little more than dull eddies in this Dark Water. For those hoping for a thrilling ghost story, the first two thirds of this film will seem to drag on without any significant development.

As a psychological drama about a single mother trying to get by in the city, Dark Water would not be half bad. Jennifer Connelly and John C. Reilly deliver solid performances. Reilly is especially fine in his role as the smooth-talking and evasive landlord. In fact, Reilly's performance is so good that it leaves one wishing the film had been a thriller about a manipulative landlord, rather than a drama-heavy supernatural thriller.

To its credit, Dark Water pulls off its obligatory twist ending rather nicely. Just when we think the film has ended in the most predictable of manners, we have another reel that extends the conflict to its true breaking point. Dahlia's maternal instincts are driven to their extreme as she is forced to make an unsettling compromise with the otherworldly forces that afflict her.

The bonus features of this DVD are ample and useful to lovers of "behind the scenes" material. Particularly revealing is a featurette entitled "Beyond the Horror," in which cast and crew discuss how Dark Water transcends the horror genre by introducing elements of drama. Dramatic horror is a fine goal, but this particular effort is a bit murky.