Dark Water

I agree with the user comment above in regard to the fact that teenagers will not appreciate this film. I kept telling myself as I was watching it, that it is not a movie that kids will understand. I shouldn't say 'all' kids, but probably most. Ironically, this is a movie that kids should see because they can learn about elements that a good movie usually contains: developed characters, a good plot, and excellent acting, to name a few. Not to mention that the movie gives the viewer a lot to think about and is an expertly crafted piece of psychological suspense.

There are reasons this movie will most likely not appeal to young people. To begin with, it is NOT a horror movie. It might be marketed to look like one, but it is more of a psychological thriller of sorts. So many kids will go to it expecting blood, gore and action, but get a literate, story-driven film instead--one in which thinking is required to fully understand what is going on. This is a movie that requires "active" viewing, just as if one were to read a well written novel with round characters, symbolism, and whatever other elements it may have to raise it beyond the level of mediocrity.

Unlike a more conventional horror movie like Boogeyman (which I also liked for other reasons), Dark Water is rooted in psychology and the inner and outer conflicts the characters attempt to overcome. It is also a film adept in creating a dark, disturbing mood. In fact, I was really impressed with its ability to play with one's emotions and fears so strongly. As another use noted above, it's almost as if the 'horror' is subliminal. The viewer doesn't necessarily have to see it in order to feel it. I think this is partly because we've all dealt with bits and pieces of what some of the main characters have to go through here. Some of their own discomfort seems familiar to us.

It is sad that many younger people cannot appreciate movies of this nature.

What Dark Water lacks in thrills, it does make up for in mood and wonderful performances, especially from Jennifer Connelly as the stressed out single mother trying to keep her wits about her after learning her apartment is haunted by a child's ghost. Expect less of a horror film and more of a drama and you'll be in the right headspace.

This is a Remake of the 2002 Japanese Horror Movie. The plot is pretty simple , a mother who is fighting custody over her daughter moves with her to a new apartment. The people in the building are strange, there's are leakage in their room and her daughter finds an imaginary friend soon....

The good aspects of the film is that it doesn't have any CGI ghosts or any evil looking spirits and yet it has an creepy feeling throughout. It is slow moving yet engaging. We have real middle class people with real problems which gives it more of a human drama than a typical horror stuff. Performances are good . There's more emotional connect than scary scenes. However the film could have been short, some scenes are absolutely no need especially the dream sequences are very unnecessary. There's not much to complain about ....it not an awesome film but it's pretty good for what it is and what it tries to be and is definitely an underrated horror drama .... Definitely worth a watch...

Dark Water is another one of those slow PG-13, atmospheric and creepy ghost stories in the vein of The Ring and the Grudge, and like those two, it is worthwhile.

The film certainly has flaws, but it is also clever and has some great drama. Jennifer Connely also gives a strong performance, and the film as a whole is probably slower than someone would think. While it is not as scary as The Ring or The Grudge, it is in a way more mature than those two because it does excel in genres other than as a thriller. Overall, it was not amazing, but certainly underrated at this time and certainly worth it.

"Don't let the rain come down" goes the old song. Not since Mike Nichols liberally used water as an ambivalent motif in The Graduate has water had such a psychological impact as it does in Dark Water, a thriller that abundantly uses horror story techniques but goes further to expose the tender nerve endings of a single mom, Dahlia, caught in a cheap Roosevelt Island apartment that drenches her and her young daughter, Ceci, incessantly both inside and out with leaking ceilings and flooding floors that promise drowning both real and figurative.

Outside the obligatory ghost, incompetent apartment super, and conflicted dad lies the awful reality of vulnerable women being forced to live in substandard housing, dangerous to health because separation leaves separating wife and husband with no means to do better. Jennifer Connelly as Dahlia has the right blend of intelligence and helplessness to bring off what might have been just another distraught 30-year old mom with seriously disturbing images of her own mother abandoning her early in life. The parallel legend of an abandoned little girl turned ghost and befriending Ceci emphasizes the universal problems faced by single mothers everywhere.

Director Walter Salles knows how to make Roosevelt Island look bleaker than an abandoned Riker's Island, more foreboding than Manhattan at dusk in a dirty winter, and yet as desirable as the nearest suburb given the astronomical rents on Manhattan Island in any year. The socially conscious Salles also hints at the secret lives of other Roosevelt detainees: a lawyer who lies about his domestic life and an apartment manager whose blather about the advantages of the decrepit apartment hides the horrors of leaking ceilings are just a few of the menaces the lonely mother faces.

Salles suggest the sacrifices a mother might have to make for her child are never gone, about as bleak as the island itself on its rainy days. Find a similar sense of abandonment and horror in The Others (2001). Any film that makes Manhattan warm by contrast is scary itself. The marginalized life of a distressed young mother has never been so well expressed as in this film, where islands are metaphors for people.

"Oh, it 's a snug little island! A right little, tight little island." Thomas Dibdin (1771-1841): The Snug Little Island.