I swear I used to live in apartments just like this is Sassaquin. Come to
think of it, they weren’t as nice as the apartments in the movie. Dark Water
Plot:
While going through a messy divorce, a mother moves to a dank and depressing N.Y. apartment building with her young daughter. Strange things begin happening, a wet spot on the ceiling keeps growing, vision begin plaguing the woman, and her child develops an unhealthy fixation upon an imaginary friend named Natasha.
Comments:
I swear I used to live in apartments just like this is Sassaquin. Come to
think of it, they weren’t as nice as the apartments in the movie.
What does that have to do with anything? Well, to be honest, it filled up two sentences in the review. I’m really racking my brain to come up with things to say about this film, but it’s just so imminently forgettable.
C’mon here Boggy. You can do this.
Ok, well the acting is good. Jennifer Connelly is good in just about anything. Even if all she does is look dour in every scene. Seems like she’s really bored. Can’t imagine why.
*cough*
Maybe because it rains constantly in the film. No really, it’s always raining. Always. I think it was an attempt to build atmosphere, and to some extent it works. The film feels quite oppressive, I kind of enjoyed the ambience, but some people may find the whole technique utterly pretentious. I was half expecting Jennifer to forget about ghosts and start building an ark.
Oh yeah! There’s a ghost in this movie! I almost forgot. And apparently, so did
the filmmakers. There’s plenty of moisture, and mood, and unfriendly people and
character conflict, and marital drama. But the film is about as scary as a cup
of warm chowder. The story isn’t bad, it’s rather interesting. However, it just goes
on, and on, and on without anything really happening. The whole thing really
needed to be cut by about 20 minutes.
The ending is about the only time that anything creepy comes into play, although it is an utter disappointment. What’s going to happen is telegraphed early on in the film. (Oh come on, “The glass won’t break no matter how hard you bang on it."? Why not just add “..even if you really, really need it to because of ghosts of something.”?!) The source material provided by Suzuki and Nakata as their follow-up to ‘Ringu’ is so derivative of said work that you can pretty much fill in the plot points before they happen. The film isn’t even strong enough to give us a tragic ending without a sappy coda to let us know that everything will be alright.
Wow, look at that! I’ve already run out of things to say about 'Dark Water'! Thank God I don’t have to do this for a living!
4.0