Dark Water Review by Jordan

The one thing that I REALLY enjoy about Nakata’s films is his style of cinematography and the overall creepiness he injects into them.  In Dark Water, just as in Ringu, it’s not just the setting that is creepy but the way Nakata lets us view it.  He leaves very subtle hints in each scene that sort of adds to the overall sense of doom and horror.

With that being said I’ll try to give you a bit of a synopsis of the film before I gush about how great this movie is!

Dark Water begins with Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) who is in a custody battle with her ex-husband over her 6-year-old daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno).  Things don’t seem to be looking good for Yoshimi as her husband is playing every dirty trick in the book and is employing a lawyer to win custody for him.

Yoshimi, on the other hand, is a single mother who has been out of work and really does not have much help on her side.  To add to her plight her husband is using the fact that she had psychiatric help several years prior as evidence against her.  The reason she went to a psychiatrist?  Well she worked as a proofreader and the novels she was forced to read over and over were quite graphic and had gotten to her after a while.

Anyways, Yoshimi (who still has custody of her daughter for the time being) begins looking for an apartment with Ikuko.  They eventually come across an older building that seems somewhat OK.  The realtor welcomes them in and they proceed to take the elevator up to the floor with the available apartment.  Here we notice our first glimpse that something is not right, there is a pool of water on the floor of the elevator.  Now this may not seem like a big deal but only for a moment we catch a glimpse of something in the security monitor, which is hooked up to the security camera in the elevator.

Hmmm…what the hell was that?  Oh well.  The movie continues and the apartment, despite being quite small, seems to suit Yoshimi and Ikuko quite well.  Lucky for the realtor Yoshimi doesn’t notice the water stain on the ceiling in the bedroom.  They end up taking the place and moving in.  As time progresses Yoshimi eventually notices the water stain which, unknowing to her, has gotten bigger since we last saw it.  It slowly increases in size and as it does, stranger and stranger things begin to happen to Yoshimi and her daughter.

Yoshimi begins to have visions (or flashbacks if you will) relating to a poster of a young girl that went missing in the area a few years ago.  They find dark hair coming out of the faucet on occasion and the water doesn’t have a good taste to it, it seems tainted somehow.  What is wrong with this building and why does the water seem to have such a prominent role?

Lets just say that as you watch the movie the pieces to the puzzle start to come together and you eventually figure out what is going on.  Again this is all helped along by the excellent direction of Hideo Nakata.  His shots are open, dark and brooding and yet at the same time they can seem claustrophobic, unsettling and even darker.  He definitely has a flair for turning a perfectly normal scene into one with a very overpowering creepiness to it.

I really enjoyed how the story of Yoshimi and Mitsuko (the girl who had gone missing) seem to parallel each other.  Perhaps that is what Nakata wanted us to see or maybe that’s just the way it turns out.  In either case it’s an interesting twist and makes the movie that much more enjoyable.

The performances were excellent by everyone, although I think Hitomi Kuroki really stood out above everyone.  She had some many emotional changes throughout the film: fear, anger, strength, love and finally sacrifice.  Rio Kanno and Asami Mizukawa (who played the older Ikuko near the end of the movie) also did an excellent job in their roles.

Altogether Dark Water was another enjoyable film from the amazing mind of Hideo Nakata.  I cannot praise this man enough and cannot wait for his next film that I may stumble across.  I also see that Dark Water is being remade by Hollywood, which seems to be the fad these days.  It will be interesting to see how Walter Salles (who is slated to direct) will handle this remake.