Dark Waters

This is not an easy movie to track down, but if you can find it, grab it.

Dark Waters (aka Dead Waters) is a great example of how atmosphere alone can make a movie work. The plot is a little confusing but trust me, you will not care. This movie is a nightmare to rival any that H.P. Lovecraft wrote down.

On a remote island in the Black Sea, there is a convent, a primitive stone fortress without electricity, virtually cut off from the rest of the world. The island is a grim, unlovely place, seemingly made up of stones and dead fish with nary a palm tree in sight. Our young heroine Elizabeth arrives on this island alone. Elizabeth is an orphan; her mother died in childbirth and her father has recently passed away. Elizabeth now wants to know why he had spent his life secretly sending good amounts of money to the convent. The nuns, a grim and sour looking lot, (not so very different from most Catholic nuns I have known) led by a blind and gravel-voiced Mother Superior, give her no straight answers, but allow Elizabeth to stay with them for the time being. Elizabeth begins having horrific nightmares, and this is where the movie really succeeds in frightening its viewers. The nightmares are truly terrifying, particularly the one in which a crucified SOMETHING approaches the camera as though on a track, opens its mouth and simply emits the most hideous, inhuman howl ever heard. It sounds like a long lost beast stuck in a tar pit, and gave me the creeped out shivers for days afterwards.

Elizabeth is befriended by a young, sweet tempered nun named Sarah, who tries to help her escape from the island. But of course, there is no escape. The answers she came looking for at the convent are all there, and too late, she learns that some things are better unknown. The truth about her birth, her mother and her identity come out in a shocking (and, unfortunately, somewhat rushed) finale with a twist that I truly had not seen coming...and I thought I'd seen them all. The only complaint I had? I wanted to see more of the monster. The glimpse I got of it showed me a bug eyed, razor mouthed THING straight out of a Lovecraftian primordial soup. But it didn't last nearly long enough.

This is a good, creepy film to watch with all the lights off, if you dare. It may move too slow for some, but if you like genuinely spooky films, lots of dark, rainy atmosphere and the cold, slimy unknown, you'll like this one.

It's best to walk into Dark Waters knowing that it's going to be an exercise of style over substance. As great and moody as the atmosphere of this movie is, the story itself is murky and hard to pin down. As best as I can tell, it's about a young woman whose father dies and she visits a strange island monestary that her father had been sending money to for years. Once she gets there, she gets the feeling that she's very unwelcome and she might unearth some truths that are better left buried.

One thing Dark Waters gets right is the atmosphere. If I didn't know any better, I'd truly believe this was a film shot in the mid-70's by some Italian horror master. It's beautifully shot with so much attention to detail. It's just a shame that the script didn't seem to have as much thought put into it. At one point, the lead character is attacked by a psychotic nun and she reacts to this as if she's just stubbed her toe. There's no sense of urgency at all. Wouldn't someone who'd just been attacked want to get out of there as soon as possible?

A young woman travels to a mysterious, unnamed island to find out why her belated father funded a strange monastery.

Dark Waters has disappeared off the planet. I wouldn't have known about it had I not read Mark Kermode's autobiography. I'm also a fan of the Tartan Video and they put out this one as a limited VHS release in 1995. Dark Waters is similar in style to the Italian Giallo films, especially the more atmospheric ones. It reminded me a bit of early Mario Bava and Soavi's The Church. The film is very atmospheric with excellent lighting and cinematography which hide its small budget. The film has drawn comparisons to Lovecraftian fiction with its use of religious themes, the unknown and suspicion of outsiders. There's further comparisons to be made to The Wicker Man. Dark Waters gets jumbled up in it storytelling and becomes lost in its own ambiguity. This is a film were a longer running time would be beneficial to iron out some of the creases.

Dark Water is a stylish and interesting horror film with some scares and some strong violence. Sadly the plot is messy and the brief bloody scenes can't save what is effectively Giallo-lite. The film is not some hidden gem or lost masterpiece. It's an above average stylish horror film that came out at a time when the market was over saturated with Straight-To-Video slashers. The film has had a Blu-Ray release which features a nice albeit soft matte picture and crisp, clean sound. There's also a rare 2-disc DVD with a replica of the stone amulet.

This incredibly slow-paced, budgetless, and odd film is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. To call this movie "stylish" would be like calling every other movie with unsuspecting killers (i.e. nuns), crazy cults, flashbacks of terrible pasts, etc. original and great. This film is far from it. I am a big-time movie fan and rarely find myself anticipating the ending. The director needs to be a tad more upbeat and faster in certain scenes (it takes a whole minute for them to film a shot of this bizarre and meaningless fish-eating freak on a boat eat some fish!). The only thing that saved this movie was the fact that it did manage to be disturbing and quite scary at certain times, but the total opposite at other times. Dark (or Dead) Waters cannot be be called "atmospheric" just because the the low-budgeted filmmakers decided to film on a nice little beach since they probably couldn't afford a proper set with decent camera equipment. Sparked by better movies such as The Evil Dead, Dark Waters is definitely a clunker. Keep away. 2.5/10

Often the camera-work struck me as surreal, entrancing and dreamlike, picking unusual shots or showing unusual images. I think it is fair to compare this movie with some of Argento's better horror work such as Suspiria and Inferno, even though it is not at that level. Dark Waters takes its time, though, and does not at all have a rock pace like Argento, at least in spots, has in his films.

Another fair comparison might be to Fulci's Demonia, but I feel this was better than that.

There is relatively little dialogue, making this, perhaps "pure cinema." Unfortunately, what dialogue there was was sometimes very low, so that I had to keep raising and lowering the volume, possibly a flaw of the DVD copy I viewed (possibly actually a VCD, I think). However, some characters' accents were also a little difficult to decipher, and while that may have been intentional, it would have been nice to have had an option of subtitles.

Some of the characters' motivation was also mysterious to me. Are all the nuns on the same side or not? Whose side are they on? Why was Sarah different than Elizabeth? Why was the father sending money to the nuns? Where was the church located?

Despite these questions, I was very taken by the movie, and would watch it again.