CNS Movie Review: Dark Water

Dark Water

By David DiCerto
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Recent years have seen a wave of Americanized remakes of Asian horror films, most notably "The Ring" and "The Grudge."

But while the Hollywood makeovers have boasted slicker effects and more star power, inevitably much of the originals' eerie edge gets lost (and dulled) in translation.

Not so with Brazilian director Walter Salles' "Dark Water" (Touchstone), a stylish and smartly crafted psychological thriller that is both sophisticated and suspenseful.

The movie, a remake of a film by Hideo Nakata, is based on a story by Koji Suzuki -- known as "the Stephen King of Japan" -- whose other novel was made into "The Ring," also directed by Nakata in its original Japanese version.

Like "The Ring," "Dark Water" features yet another child who "can see dead people" and a ghostly girl who met a watery grave (here at a water tower instead of in a well). But what makes Salles' film a cut above the average is its well-developed story and characters.

Set in a perpetually rainy New York City, "Dark Water" centers on recently separated single-mom Dahlia (convincingly played by Jennifer Connelly), who is struggling to keep hold of her sanity and her 5-year-old daughter (Ariel Gade) after moving into a dilapidated apartment with a creepy chronic ceiling leak and a dark past.

Almost immediately, things start to go bump -- or drip -- in the night, causing the emotionally fragile Dahlia, who is still dealing with unresolved issues involving her own mother, to question her slowly fracturing mental state.

To make matters worse, she is also locked in an ugly custody battle with her estranged husband (Dougray Scott), and suspects he may be trying to help drive her crazy.

John C. Reilly plays the building's oily managing agent, and Pete Postlethwaite its cranky super. Tim Roth makes the most of limited screen time as Dahlia's lawyer.

The film is an old-fashioned ghost story, only its haunted house happens to be a drab apartment complex on Roosevelt Island, a boney finger of land in the East River that runs parallel to Manhattan. (The island was originally used to house the city's dispossessed, an appropriately purgatorial backdrop for a yarn about restless spirits.)

At its heart, "Dark Water" is about a mother-daughter relationship. It also explores themes of isolation, abandonment and parental anxiety.

The film's symbolic use of water should resonate with Christians; only here it is not a sacramental signifier of grace and cleansing, but -- black and ominous -- a metaphor for madness, sin and despair.

Deftly directed by Salles ("Central Station" and "The Motorcycle Diaries"), from an intelligent screenplay by Rafael Yglesias, "Dark Water" evokes the films of Hitchcock and Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby." Its carefully calibrated balancing of bleak realism and spooky supernaturalism echoes fellow South American-born director Alejandro Amenabar's "The Others."

Though the film's otherworldly outlook doesn't necessarily gel with the church's teaching about our souls' final destination, the hauntingly poignant final moments speak beautifully to the Christian hope of love's ability to transcend death.

Full of moody, claustrophobic atmospherics, "Dark Water" takes a more subtle psychological approach to maintaining its taut-nerve tension, massaging the imagination and keeping viewers' cold sweat on a slow drip rather than going for cheap jolts with lots of gore or computer-generated tricks.

The film contains mature thematic elements, recurring menace, some frightening moments, child peril, including a disturbing drowning sequence, a brief implied sexual situation and scattered crude language and profanity and an instance of rough language. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

END

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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