rooee
After Ringu and its sequel in the late 1990s, prolific J-horror grandmaster Hideo Nakata returned to familiar ground in 2002 with this intimate and very scary family drama/ghost story/murder mystery hybrid. Like Ringu, it was remade (reasonably well) in Hollywood – an indication of the central story's universal appeal.While awaiting custody proceedings over her daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno), Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki) recalls being left at kindergarten while her own parents argued about who should pick her up. These memories inform the whole premise and tenor of the film: Yoshimi is terrified of losing her daughter. So she convinces the divorce panel that she is looking for work and a new home for her and Ikuko. Mother and daughter move into a cheap, brutalist tenement. It's basic but serviceable. Yoshimi gets a job and soon the pair have achieved some kind of normality. But something's not quite right. There's a damp patch on the ceiling and it's gradually growing. And who is that strange little girl wearing the yellow mac? As Yoshimi seeks the truth – all the while protecting her daughter and triggering her own deep-seated fears – she will uncover the tragedy of a missing child that will haunt her on an existential level. As with Ringu, Nakata shows his mastery of the slow horror form, and is in complete control. The frame is drained of bright colour and tinged with blue and grey, almost as if we're underwater. Forget about cheap jump shocks – Nakata is all about presence, subtly introducing us to the layout of the apartment block before planting its corners with half-glimpsed human forms and shadows. Meanwhile, the subtle, eerily ambient score textures the images rather than crashing the cuts. The two main performances are excellent, portraying an entirely believable bond between mother and daughter. Kuroki's performance may aggravate at first – Yoshimi is all nodding subservience and hysterical nerves – but gradually we empathise. As the clouds clear on the mystery of the girl in the raincoat, so they do too on Yoshimi's really quite rational fear of abandonment. While you can see its influence on recent fare like The Babadook, which similarly focused as much on the mother-child dynamic as the scares, Dark Water also owes itself to films that came before. The image of the possibly supernatural, raincoated child, for example, clearly harks back to Don't Look Now; and we even get a final act shock that matches Nicolas Roeg's classic for sheer, lurching terror.Dark Water is deep and foreboding; a bass thrum of a horror which keeps its creepy cards close to its chest. It is intricate and heartfelt and provides pictures that linger. It is also, crucially, an effective and moving love story about family bonds, which is key to grasping the real horror here: the horror of loss.
atinder
I did seen the remake before this and I did re-watch this few days before this movie as I thought I had not seen the remake before but then it hit, that I did see the remake before and It was very get able There was not much different from the remake at all, it did have some better and some bit more creepy feel to the remake/ Maybe I soon have not seen too soon after the remake, I was really bored by it, I watched it's all way thought.This didn't seem the same impact on me as other J-horror movies, I loved Ringu, ju-on and One missed called series. There were one or teo creepy moment that really stand out this movie nothing really that memorable.A liked the ending in this movie a lot better then remake cause here easy to understand. 4 out of 10
felixoteiza
This is the most depressing flick I have seen in my life. Also the one with the dumbest end twist. I wish someone has warned me beforehand, as they would have spared me 2 very sad hours. That's why this will be, rather than a review, a warning for the reader so what happened to me won't happen to him/her. Now, I would have never taken this one home if it wasn't for the fact that I have been watching some pretty good supernatural Asian flicks--The Eye, Ringu and so on--and I got carried away. But that stops there; no such luck here, this one is to miss, if you don't want to feel like shooting yourself after viewing it.This is rare flick in that it never gives you a break, never lets up. Thoroughly depressing, just as Irreversible is disgusting, and that from beginning to end. There is absolutely no light moments here, no pause to the horrible things happening to the protagonist, no comic relief, no ironic social comment; nothing of that breather, that distancing from reality, that you need so when watching a litany of sad events; that little something that will tell you that, after all, you are just watching a movie. See, this is about a poor young woman who's not only engaged in a bitter custody battle with the father of her 6 year old daughter but who at the same time has to find a new job and to get set in her new apartment--in a creepy old building, where water is pouring all over, without management giving a hoot about it. On top of that, she starts sensing some strange things going on there—frequent steps on the empty apartment above hers; mysterious, fleeting shapes, silhouettes walking on the roof—all that while her kid starts acting weird and having fainting spells at school. But her main problem is that she seems to be all by herself in the world, the only two people with whom she seems to relate in any way—besides the school personal and the Child Services--being her ex, who'll do anything to take her kid away from her, and some sort of white knight of a lawyer who appears as from thin air and who seems ready to sly dragons for her but who won't be there when she'll need him most. This point is driven by hedge hammer to us, from beginning to end, in case you missed it: the poor soul doesn't have any luck, she doesn't get any break; nobody in the world is there to lend her a hand; no parents, no brothers or sisters, no friends--all that in a society where, we're told, family & friends are so important. As for myself I venture that the main cause of all that is simply that she's stupid, as you'll see now.So, the film starts with her moving to that apartment in that old, rickety, building, which for all purposes looks already abandoned, as we won't ever see anybody but her in it, except for a couple of old folks in the lobby in just one occasion, so you'll be excused if you think she is actually living in an abandoned building. Now, why I'm saying she is stupid. For aprox. 90 min. the point is driven to us, also with a sledge hammer, that her kid is everything to her, that she just couldn't live without her. Naturally, we feel also her panic when she temporally loses her; we tremble with her when we realize the ghost--as there's a ghost in the building--is going after the daughter and we are horrified when it seems to have gotten her for good. Now, before going any further, the ghost is that of a girl of the same age who lived in the apartment above hers, who was abandoned by her own parents and who went once for some reason to climb to the top of the water tower, fell into it and drowned. All that without anybody ever noticing what had happened and giving from then on the girl as disappeared. Now, what occurs in the crucial scene I talked about is that this ghost girl appears physically to her, the woman, in the elevator, and grabs her and starts calling her "Mom", presumably taking her for her real mother, all that in front of the horrified eyes of her kid. And what does the woman do then? She waves her child good bye, she abandons her! having decided to become a ghost also and do babysitting for the deceased girl. All that after having babbled for about90 min. about how much she loves her kid! Didn't I say this is the dumbest end twist ever in a movie (and had this woman ever seen Ghost Whisperer?).In all, a depressing, inane, waste of time. One to ignore. 2/10.
