Dark Water DVD > Reviews > Deep dark waters of disturbed conciousness.

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Artisticly presented, indirect psychological horror
Disadvantages:	Too muted and suggestive, slow and sonorous .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Based on a book by Kofi Suzuki this film is in Japanese with English subtitles. It is directed by Hideo Nakata who had fame from “The Ring” cycle horror epic. It stars Hitomi Kuroki and Rio Kanno. The film came out in 2003.

Dark water is the title and the theme throughout is the omnipresence of darkness and relentless, mysterious, frightening water. Not water of major storms and high seas. Everyday Monday morning rain water, damp and drips, water from taps and water tanks.

Light flashes through murky water as the film opens in pouring rain. There are umbrellas beneath the heavy pounding rain, then a child. The small child alone and vulnerable watching the rain and the mother come into focus. This film reaches out to the struggling mother caring for the small child. We realise the loneliness of both in their own way. The mother who will struggle for survival and the child she struggles for. The child waiting for the mother, feeling alone and unwanted.

We realise that the mother(Yoshimi) is engaged in a custodial battle for her daughter. There has been doubt of her competence cast by the ex husbands lawyers. He wants custody. She is a single parent whose child means everything. All the more so since she knew the isolation and neglect of her own mother. There is evidence to be brought that she has had psychiatric treatment and therefore may be unstable and unable to give a secure upbringing for her child.

She succeeds for the present and clings on to her beloved offspring and searches for somewhere to live and work in the big, lonely city (Tokyo). Along by the river, where the dark waters seep, again the rain teems, greyly, disturbingly.

The rooms she finds are in a large sombre apartment building. There are rows of grubby looking deserted corridors, many doors and yet no people to be seen. The agent takes her up in the lift. The water pervades into the lift. Then an eerie hand in the lift could be her daughters but probably isn’t. A shadow appears. The horror is suggestive and disturbing, it escalates slowly, insidious rather than obvious, that is for most of the time!

In the flat it seems good, apart from that damp patch on the ceiling. A patch that will slowly, ominously, spread. Meanwhile, inexorably, the rain falls. Everywhere is bareness and cold wetness.

The daughter (Hitomi) seems to be lured by something and disappears. She appears on the rain soaked roof, smiling as she finds something. The ominous soundtrack racks the nerves. Mother searches the gloomy corridors. Hitomi finds a red child’s school bag. No-one knows who owns this bag. This school bag will continue to re-appear throughout the film, shockingly illogically, heralding the presence of a supernatural owner.

All these strange events don’t deter Mother, but the damp patch makes puddles in the bedroom, she reaches for the headache pills. Hair appears in the tap water and Ikuko starts a new school..

Supernatural pressure builds up, knocking noises, red bag re-appearing, glimpses of a little girl in the corridor. Mother gets a job but court presses for neglect charge, head teacher shows disturbed paintings of red bag, says “it’s always the children without two parents who get problems like this”. Paranoia as mother thinks father behind red bag plot.

Attention will focus on the room where the damp patch comes from and it will be revealed that a little girl, just like hers, waiting for mummy to come home, lived there. Only the little girl vanished without trace. Truth is, while waiting for her mother, the little girl went off with her red school lunch bag to investigate the water tower after workmen left it unsealed. She dropped the bag down, reached out to get it, slipped and….was never seen again. Another parent struggled with work schedules to support another vulnerable little daughter until disaster happened.

Throughout the loneliness of mothers and daughters is accentuated by the barren, inhuman empty world of dismal architecture.There are major climaxes, involving water out of control, life threatening, polluted and ghost ridden.

One social worker does help a little, for a moment the world shows it can help this poor struggling family unit. But the plot is one of doom and damnation of an inescapable kind where alas, poor mummy will pay the ultimate penalty. There is a ghost child who wants a real mummy and this one is going to fit the bill. On this occasion there is not only the danger of society rearranging one’s life but also an estranged phantom.

Nowhere is safe. The water tortured infant gets to school, sploshing water and sending her living counterpart into deep illness. The bathroom floods, the roof water tank is the scene of some very strange images and sounds as poor mother investigates. And that red bag keeps popping up everywhere.

The ghost effects are for the most part spine chillingly muted and insidious, a blurred figure in the hall, a small hand that shouldn’t be there, an echoing noise faintly doom laden.

Watch out for a doppelganger effect and a major heart arresting moment when poor mum decides what’s best and unfortunately the little ghoulie gains the permanent upper hand.

The touching post script re-union scene tinged with the fatalism that could be Edgar Allan Poe or any horror genre writer. Daughter will say “My mother was all the time protecting me” Deep down you might wonder if it all was just in mother’s head.

You should find it shocking and sad. If you like feeling psychologically disturbed, this film has class and it could be said, a social message about the vulnerability of the lone mother and her struggle for survival. Though it’s mostly a ghost story it’s not lacking in ultimate horror.

If you like your horror more blatant and upfront you might find it too artistic and slow moving.