If
a creepy tone and a soggy tenement building were all it took to make a good spook-fest,
then Dark Water would be the best flick of it’s kind since The Sixth Sense.
The film comes to America by way of a circuitous set of foreign circumstances.
Dark Water is the latest Americanized revamp of beloved Japanese thrillers by
director Hideo Nakata (The Ring, The Ring 2 and The Grudge). Directed by Walter
Salles fresh off his highly praised Motorcycle Diaries, and written by Ring scribe
Rafael Yglesias - Dark Water is not in the same class as the first Ring Remake,
but a notch better than The Grudge.
We
get underway when Dahlia Williams (Jennifer Connely) still reeling from a bitter
divorce, is seeking a cheap apartment for her and her daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade)
who is a huge boost to the film, proving to be a more than capable child actress.
John C. Reilly plays a slumlord able to fake human feelings when circumstances
dictate, who shows the ladies a strange Eastern-European inspired apartment structure
whose architects had originally imagined the stark complex as some sort of Utopian
set up. Isolated as it is upon New York’s creepy Roosevelt Island, where
it seems to rain 24/7, the severe structure is in fast decline, dank and prone
to incessant leakage. After meeting Veck, the buildings gruff and slightly sinister
super (Pete Postlethwaite) Ceci is soon lobbying her mother to just leave the
eerie place post haste, but after wandering off by herself (seemingly bidden by
an invisible presence) she winds up on the roof of the building where she finds
a Hello Kitty backpack. Reilly and Connely soon form a frantic search party and
after finally tracking her down and delivering a stern talking-to about running
off by herself and dangerous rooftops etc., Ceci has had a dramatic change of
heart. She is now completely enchanted by the crumbling stack of bricks and before
you can say “sign here and here and here,” Reilly is calculating his
commission.
Next
thing you know Ceci is helping mom unload pots and pans in this dreary 9th floor
flat where we all know foul things will soon be abrew. Sure enough it isn’t
long before, brace yourself for this, strange happenings start to occur and strange
occurrences begin to happen. The first manifestation of which is a nasty dark
water stain that appears in mom’s bedroom and the pitter pat of footsteps
just above in the ominous apartment 10F. After making an unsuccessful appeal to
Veck for help with the plumbing problem, Dahlia takes the elevator up to take
a look in the apartment above hers. Strangely the door is ajar and she enters
to find the place flooded with the titular substance, some of which is spewing
violently from faucets in the kitchen and bathroom.
At
about this point we are witness to a flashback where Dahlia as a young girl (about
Ceci’s age) is waiting to be picked up at school by her mother. When at last
she arrives she arrives she is clearly drunk and handles her daughter roughly
as she ushers her into the car. As it turns out Dark Water is a pretty straight
forward psychological thriller, and I use the word thriller loosely here, because
the film never does manage any very effective scares, or even any very disturbing
images akin to The Ring or The Grudge. Dahlia soon turns up at the medicine cabinet
where she medicates herself for what we soon find out are migraines. A condition
that obviously played a part in the dissolution of her marriage. Her husband (Dougray
Scott) an actor tortured by the fact that he has three first names and no last,
makes it clear from the get-go that Dahlia needs to get herself a lawyer because
he has plans to petition the courts for full custody of Ceci, due to Dahlia’s
history of mental instability. As we are to learn Dahlia’s alcoholic mother
abandoned her as a child and we see a few scenes where that demonstrate her ongoing
psychological scars that have resulted.
She
succeeds in securing the services of a lawyer, an interesting fellow played by
Tim Roth who works out of his car. His clients sit in the backseat while he drives
around with a headset, advising them and making calls in their behalf. To Dahlia
he claims to have a family that he is constantly having to run off to be with,
but at these times he seeks refuge in seedy movie theaters and never does the
film bother to explain any of this. Still he remains one of the film’s more
compelling characters and about the only person that Dahlia ends up being able
to trust. You get the impression that if the film were to have a sequel Dahlia
would probably hook up with him and that they’d make a proper pair of crazies.
Meanwhile
Ceci is more the focal point of the strange goings on. Her school teacher complains
about an imaginary friend that she talks to aloud in school and after a bit of
investigation, her mother discovers that this imaginary friend is named Natasha
which turns out to be the name of a girl that had recently lived above them in
waterlogged apartment 10F. At night as Ceci lays in bed, we see her from the vantage
of a heater duct as she sings with and carries on conversations with Natasha.
I
shant give up much more about Natasha, suffice to say that she is to play a major
role in the final act of the film. Aside from not being very scary, the film is
also terribly predictable and very much telegraphs all it’s surprises and
reveals so that when anything transpires that’s supposed to startle or confound
the audience, we’ve already got it well sussed out. Particularly the ending
which just keeps going and going. Every time I figured the film was going to end,
another scene would follow that would further explain what we already knew. This
happened at least 3 times, to the point where I was thinking okay okay I get it
already I’m not a moron. Evidently the filmmakers weren’t going to be
content until everyone from young children to mental defectives were perfectly
aware of just exactly what happened. It’s not like this thing was the Sixth
Sense and not a lot more difficult to figure out than an ordinary episode of Blues
Clues. In the end dark brown water erupting from plumbing fixtures is only so
scary. If I were a thumbs up or down type of critic, my opposable digit would
be aimed at the soggy carpet on Dark Water.
