DARK WATER (2005)

Dark Water completely misses the mark as a straight horror film. It does however work as a capable dark psychological thriller. Unfortunately though, Director Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries) chose to embrace the horror aspects instead of doing what he does best which is serious, emotional human drama. And strangely, the few jump out horror scenes in the movie, along with an uneventful misdirected ending, are what sinks Dark Water (pun intended) below the level of a very good movie.
The cast in Dark Water is a strong one including BAFTA\Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly in the lead role as Dahlia, a mother struggling to get by raising her daughter whilst in a embittered custody case between her and her husband over their young daughter Ceci, played extremely capably by Ariel Gade. Baby faced John C. Reilly puts in another good performance as Mr. Murray, a scum bag lowlife that runs the broken down apartment building that Dahlia and Ceci move into. The severely underused Pete Postlethwaite is very funny as Veeck, a grumpy handyman who knows more about the odd things going on inside the building than he first lets on. The sterling cast carries this low key movie and is helped by an excellent eerily dark atmosphere. For a while it seems like this one is going to be a classy well acted horror drama. But not for long!

The film goes pear-shape though when it prostitutes itself by trying to do the jump-out-your-seat routine. There isn't a single scare in the film that works. The initial build in tension is pretty good, but the actual peak of terror just falls flat on its face. The film uses typical cliches and doesn't even do those justice. The horror scenes actually feel very awkward and misplaced and that's because, at its core this isn't really a horror film. The original Japanese Dark Water (on which this US production is based), like so many other great Asian movies pummeled on the viewers nerves as well as developing the characters. The US version works extremely well on the character aspect but not at all on the horror ones. For most of the movie, it seems like it's about Connelly's character Dahlia going through a horrible time in her life. She seems like she could have a nervous breakdown at any moment and you never know if the supernatural occurrences are a state of mind or something more sinister. Connelly does an excellent job of showing this mental deterioration but the focus of the film unfortunately shifts into a cheap attempt to frighten the audience instead of biding its time and turning up the tension in moderation.
In the third act, the movie just completely goes off the rails and heads down the 'ghost story' route. Now ordinarily this wouldn't be a bad thing, but when it proceeds a far more personnel and darkly enjoyable opening, you feel you've been taken back to primary school after attending high school. The problem is that Walter Salles isn't that type of director. If he would have continued with what he started doing in the first part of the movie he would have had a nice little film on his hands. Instead he goes for the gold in the scare department and comes up empty-handed. Maybe Salles didn't have much of a creative input to the film and perhaps it was up to the producers and meddling studio heads to decide how intellectual (or not) the film would end up being but whatever the reason, it doesn't really matter now. All that matters is the end product.

Dark Water is just an average movie that had a chance of being something special. It's viewable, especially because of the great cast, but after seeing its potential in the beginning, it's all the more disappointing when you're subjected to its completely unfulfilling end. Sadly, this movie can be put on the long list of remakes that should have never been made.