DARK WATER

Directed by Walter Salles

Starring: Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reily, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott, Camryn Manheim and Pete Postlethwaite

USA, 2005

105 minutes

HONOGURAI MIZU NO SOKO KARA

Directed by Hideo Nakata

Starring: Hitomi Kuroki

Japanese, 2002

101 minutes

Reviewed by Val Frost

Watson Scale rating for DARK WATER (0 being worst and 6 being perfect): 3.75

Watson Scale rating for HONOGURAI MIZU NO SOKO KARA (0 being worst and 6 being perfect): 2.5

Alrighty then, just can’t find the time, effort of STEAM to review Chinese movies lately, so what. So sue me. You gotta take it and you’re gonna LIKE IT.

Um so …. Uh … OH yeah. The plot of both the American and Japanese films are basically the same: Recently separated wife and little girl move into a gawd-forsaken dump of a building, and soon weird shit starts happening. Asshole Father doesn’t help matters by being, you know, an asshole, and very soon, wife’s past mental troubles call into question her ability to be a good parent.

You get the point.

What I found so interesting in both of the films is that the Japanese version goes for the cheap thrill – the kind we have all seen before in other (and far superior) J-horror movies. You know … the startling music, the flash of SOMETHING, the blurry face down the hall bit … And it’s sorta creepy, but not really since we’ve all been there before. I only found one part to be rather frightening, and another, potentially poop-in-your-pants-fest part, is totally ruined (RUINED!!) by bad makeup and what I guess is really bad puppetry.

The atmospheric American version has none of that, but instead tells its story through mood and suggestion. It never stops raining in the city (NYC to be exact), never. Shadow and rain and darkness are all around and slowly encroach upon the viewer’s sense of family and wellbeing. The apartment Dahlia and Ceci (Areil Gade) rent is just fucking scary – I mean, holy cow you just want to retch when you see it. Dahlia fixes it up quite nicely, but it really is the first impression that grasps the viewer.

The apartment Yoshimi and Ikuko (Rio Kanno) rent is nearly a double of Dahlia’s – only larger and not nearly as cruddy. And as a whole, though the stories are basically the same (except for the not-so-interesting epilogue in the Japanese version), the cinematography is what makes Salles’ version so fucked-up creepy, while the lighting in Nakata’s movie is downright boring. It’s dull and totally uninspired. I felt like I was watching a crappy TV show at times, and while one could argue that ‘oh hey, if the story was good enough, the cinematography shouldn’t matter’ – it does matter here because the story just isn’t scary enough to be saddled with a dull-as-used-nails lighting scheme. Salles’ film is full of fear, anxiety and angst – told mostly with the use of light and shadow. And the story needs this cuz really, it ain’t all that interesting without it!

The intricacies of the plot are, not surprisingly, far more fleshed out and interesting in the American version. Again the Japanese aren’t big on motive or the where’s, how’s and why’s of plot; stuff that we Westerners will FREAK OUT over if we don’t have (compare both versions of THE GRUDGE to see in more detail what I’m talking about here). Of course the characters also greatly suffer in the Japanese telling of the story. The role of the building super is nothing more than a background (and annoying) character, but Postlethwaite brings something both sad and menacing to the role.

As far as the acting goes, well, I saw the dubbed version of Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara, so it’s hard to say. Eh. As for Salles’ film, Connelly does a nice job, as does the rest of the cast (Postlethwaite especially) but I want to make one mention here of how fucking annoying the character of Ceci is in the beginning of the Dark Water. Oh my god – I wanted to punt kick the little bitch across the roof of the building. Really, what an unpleasant little girl. Of course it didn’t help that the chick sitting next to me in the theater kept saying “Oh my god she is SO CUTE!!” Shut the fuck up lady; she’s a fucking brat who needs her bum spanked HARD. Jesus.

And with that my friends, I will end my review.