Dark 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.

Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is in the middle of a nasty divorce from her husband, Kunio Hamada (Fumiyo Kohinata). The biggest issue of contention is their daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). Kunio accuses Yoshimi of being unstable, and he seems to have a point. Still, Yoshimi is awarded at least temporary custody of Ikuko. We see her finding an apartment for her and Ikuko to live in. They pick a less-than-ideal apartment, because it is affordable. Soon after, strange occurrences begin. Yoshimi's bedroom ceiling is developing a water stain. Mysterious puddles of water appear in different locations. An unusual item keeps appearing, despite attempts to discard it. Yoshimi periodically sees a strange girl, but only in glimpses. Ikuko begins acting oddly. On top of all this, Yoshimi is trying to go back to work, and she's having trouble balancing that with taking care of Ikuko. Things are spiraling out of control. Are the problems due to Yoshimi's divorce, or is there also something more sinister or supernatural going on?

Despite Dark Water's relatively overt similarities to a number of other filmic works, this is one of director Hideo Nakata's most successful films--at least as good as his famed Ringu (1998), if not better. I came awfully close to giving Dark Water a 10 out of 10, and can easily see myself raising my score on subsequent viewings. Many facets of the film do not open up until you see them again. For example, when fact checking something about the film shortly before writing this review, I re-watched the beginning; the opening credits are extremely eerie, but the full impact doesn't hit you until after you've seen the film once and more fully realize what you're looking at while watching the first shot.

The similarities include quite a few thematic resemblances to Ringu, which shouldn't be surprising considering that not only is Nakata the director for both films, they are both based on novels by the man who is often called "The Japanese Stephen King", at least in the Japanese press--Koji Suzuki.

Like Ringu, Dark Water's menace comes in the form of a young, long haired Japanese girl who makes frequent, mysterious appearances. Girls may be the focus because of irony--they're supposed to be cute (as is Kanno, who turns in a great performance along with her more adult fellow cast) and innocent. A girl menace should therefore be that much more unnerving.

The menace is often accompanied by water. Water was important symbolism in Ringu, too. I would venture a guess that Nakata and/or Suzuki have a fear of water. It might be more impersonal, too. Water is a powerful force, both easily adapting to its surroundings and easily molding them. It permeates much of the world. As such, it's a good visual symbol for kami, which is the Shinto "essence" or "beingness" that permeates everything, and (among many other things) can be godlike, or the soul of a dead human, or tsumi, a "pollution" form of kami which could perhaps be also at least symbolically cleansed by water.

Another important symbolic commonality shared by both Ringu and Dark Water is that of claustrophobic spaces. These occur in Ringu in forms like the well, closets and crawl spaces. Dark Water has the elevator and a structure for which you'll only realize the importance near the end of the film. Water combined with the elevator also enables Nakata to give a nice nod to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) in one scene.

A further similarity to Ringu is that Dark Water is just as concerned with familial problems as it is concerned with horror. In fact, the horror may only be symbolic or may only be a metaphor for familial problems (in the Ringu/Ring films, this is made even more clear in Nakata's latest, American Ring film--The Ring Two, 2005). Both feature a young mother struggling to maintain a normal existence with her only child. In Dark Water, it is particularly easy to see the horror elements as mere metaphors for Yoshimi's psychological decline and the effects it has on her daughter, which echo her own problematic childhood--we learn that her parents were also divorced when she was young, and the opening dramatic scene of the film shows Yoshimi as a child, waiting at school for someone to pick her up. We also hear her comment that her mother was "bad".

This is not to say that Dark Water has no focus on horror. Nakata's well known deliberate pacing is perfect here. The spooky events are subtle but unnerving, and Nakata achieves some amazing build-ups, such as the scene in the elevator near the end of the film, with a particularly frightening reveal. This reveal works as well as it does because Nakata takes so long to get there. He builds tension through stretching out pregnant pauses until the viewer is ready to burst. There are many such scenes throughout the film.

Dark Water also succeeds because the story is kept relatively simple and straightforward. Unlike typical American films, much of the story is "told" through implication. As a viewer, you are frequently left to figure out decisions and events based on seemingly innocuous comments in an antecedent scene followed by relationship and scenario changes in a following scene. In other words, you have to make assumptions about what has happened. That might sound complex, but the aim, which is wonderfully achieved, is actually to simplify the events on screen. Although that famous Asian horror film dream logic is still present in the supernatural events, it doesn't usurp the plot, which continues to gradually hone in on and build up the tension between Yoshimi, her husband, Ikuko, the mystery girl, and the apartment complex. The ending, which comments on all of those elements and the profound ways that they've changed, is particularly uncanny and poignant.

Director Hideo Nakata's 1998 offering, "Ringu," based on a book by the so-called "Stephen King of Japan," Koji Suzuki, was one of the scariest movies I've seen in years. Thus, it was with great expectation that I popped the same team's 2002 effort, "Dark Water," into my DVD player at home. And while this latter film may not be the horror masterpiece that "Ringu" is, it still has much to offer. The story here concerns a newly divorced mother, Yoshimi Matsubara (sympathetically portrayed by Hitomi Kuroki), who moves into a run-down apartment building with her 5-year-old daughter, Ikuko, while at the same time starting a new job and engaging in a custody battle. We really come to care about the plight of these two characters, especially when some decidedly creepy incidents in the building start to pile up, and this gradually escalating sense of there being something "wrong" with the building turns out to be fully justified. Whereas "Ringu" provided us with that truly terrifying TV crawl-through scene, "Dark Water" offers a scene that is also absolutely guaranteed to raise the hackles on the back of any viewer's neck (I'm thinking here of the one in the elevator near the end, natch). Similar again to "Ringu," a water container turns out to be the site of a childhood tragedy, and a lank-haired ghost girl makes for one very creepy presence. Special kudos must be given here to young Rio Kanno, in her role as Ikuko. Kanno is just remarkable, and surely one of the most adorable kids I've ever seen on film. I'd give her a 9.8 on the Cute-O-Meter. With an involving story, excellent acting, some genuine chills and that great novelist/director pedigree mentioned above, "Dark Water" is a fine example of "J-horror" indeed, and if nothing else underlines the importance of having a really good building super!

A story very similar in certain areas to another story by Hideo Nakata, but different enough to stand apart. Using similar techniques to the Ring series, Nakata employs askew camera angles, wide shots and the mixing of foreground and background, showing normality in one and abnormality in the other, often with the horrors in the background, unnoticed by the foreground characters. The use of audio, and indeed lack of in parts, heightens the tension and the feeling of unease even more. Throughout the film a nervousness grows, beginning with a slight niggle of something wrong, building to the final shocking realisations. Despite understanding the story before the end is reached, Nakato manages to pull you on through the story, in fact, even past where other films would have ended. Acting from the child is stunningly good, as is with the mother, with much of the story played out in the emotions of their faces rather than their actual words. This is perhaps what succeeds so well, the realism of the dialogue and the slow brooding story, with a distinct lack of action. Something Hollywood attempts to recreate in their unoriginal remakes.

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.