Dark Water

The reviser Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) has just divorced from her husband and is disputing the custody of their five years old daughter Ikuko Matsubara (Rio Kano) in the justice. She is looking for an apartment and a job to restart her life alone with Ikuko. She finds a small old apartment, and she does not pay attention to a stain of water on the ceiling. When she moves to the apartment, she notes that there is a drip of water in the bedroom, and she asks the landlord to repair the leakage. Meanwhile, Ikuko finds a red bag on the terrace, and Yoshimi returns it to the administrator. Yoshimi sees the creepy shape of a girl wearing a yellow coat, and she finds that she resembles a young girl that has been missing for two years in the neighborhood. She becomes afraid that the girl might be a ghost.

"Honogurai Mizu no Soko Kara" is a tense low-paced horror movie, with a frightening and original story. The characters and the situation are slowly developed, the climax is scary, but I did not like the conclusion. I was really a little disappointed, since I expected much more. However, this film is another great Japanese horror movie, the best producers of this genre in the present days. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Dark Water – Água Negra" ("Dark Water – Black Water")

This is my idea of a horror movie. No junk, no noise, no random jolts, but plenty of fear, delivered quietly and compactly, without fuss. It's the most suspenseful movie I've seen since "Ring," and I think it's even better. Like that movie, it put my stomach in knots to prep them for the chills, which rose up like waves out of calm water. I thought "Ring" rather like a Robert Aickman story; this is as near as a movie can come. The director has uncanny skill in knowing where to place the camera and how long to hold a shot. And the leading actress gives a wonderful performance. Her face in the elevator...but that would be giving it away. The conclusion is foreseeable--maybe the ends of all ghost stories are foreseeable--but nonetheless satisfying. If you like tales of quietly disturbing dread, this is one for you.

I know on the subject of the saddest scene in the film, the majority will immediately go for the elevator scene which, granted is TRULY heart breaking, especially when Yoshimi and Ikuko look at each other through the closed elevator doors, both crying, just before it goes up to the top floor, etc.

However, for some reason, I keep thinking about the 'final goodbye scene' set 10 years later when Ikuko is 16 - when she returns to the apartment complex, it would seem hoping to find her Mother.

When she goes inside their old apartment and everything is just as it was 10 years ago when Yoshimi 'disappeared' (as far as Ikuko was concerned).

She looks around the apartment, which seems abandoned and is about to leave when she senses another 'presence' in the room, and turns to see her mother standing in the bedroom looking at her.

Once they have talked and Ikuko suggests returning to with live with her again, Yoshima tells her that she is 'sorry, that they can't be together'.

Ikuko senses Mitsuko behind her, spins around to find no one there, then turns back to her mother who has also disappeared (to return with the ghost). Again, left alone calling for her mother. Gulp!!! Then the very last shot in the film of Ikuko walking away from the apartment complex - for the last time. It seems that truth of what happened 10 years ago has finally dawned on her and she's all the more saddened now knowing that she and her mother never will be together again, contrary to what she had hoped for.

A total tragedy for both daughter AND mother who I felt every bit as sorry for in the painful choice and sacrifice she had to make.

Then, that gorgeous piece of music as the credits roll. I saw the film two days ago and that 'final goodbye' scene is still in my head. I think it actually moved/saddened me more than the elevator scene.

Divorcée Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) and her young daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno) move into a run-down apartment block where they are haunted by the ghost of Mitsuko Kawai, an emotionally troubled little girl whose body has remained undiscovered since she accidentally drowned in the building's water storage tank two years earlier.

Those who watch Hideo Nakata's Dark Water expecting a real fright-fest might be rather disappointed: it's a slow burner of a film that delivers a relentlessly brooding atmosphere, one of death and decay, but which is surprisingly short on nerve-jangling scares (unless, of course, you're freaked out by dripping water, red schoolbags, or six year old girls, in which case you'll be scared s**tless).

Indeed, for most of the running time, Yoshimi or Ikuko never actually appear to be in any real danger from the film's restless spirit, their problems arising from far less ethereal sources, and it is only in the films closing moments that it becomes apparent that Mitsuko means to do Ikuko harm (so that she can claim Yoshimi as a surrogate mother) and the real horror begins.

Although Nakata's direction is a little too languid in style for my taste, it is technically accomplished, with innovative camera-work and stunning cinematography throughout, and the cast give excellent performances; it might not have left me with the serious case of the jitters I had hoped for, but I had a reasonable enough time with Dark Water, and certainly recommend it over the dreary remake.

The American horror film scene has been getting staler and staler for the better part of two decades. We get the same boring clichés and jump scares packaged under different titles with little originality. That is not to say that there aren't some very good American horror films to be produced since the 1980s but the more Asian horror that I watch the more I see that they have taken up the torch and are producing the best horror movies of the era.

Dark Water isn't necessarily one of the best Asian horror films to come out but it certainly is a good one. The American remake is really indicative of what is wrong with the industry in North America. The story is the same and many of the scenes are very similar but for some reason, some intangible reason, it is of remarkably lower quality. Even with a very talented actress in the lead role it still doesn't shine like the Japanese original, even though it possesses every required ingredient. It is these intangibles that the Asian horror scene has somehow mastered and the American scene has lost.

Dark Water itself is a nice little ghost story. It is a slow-burner with an unsettling tale and reveals itself subtlety. The characters are not throw away fodder as in many modern American horror tales and there are some scenes that had me, a hardened horror veteran, wanting to squint my eyes at the television screen. This is not American horror in the sense that everything is not in your face blood, gore, and knife wielding psychos. This is a much more subtle, psychological tale. It will creep under your skin.

Asian horror is the new standard. I hope that the American industry will learn thing a thing or two from the Asian scene and not just try to emulate it so that perhaps the next generation of filmmakers can bring the torch of horror back to the United States.