Dark Water (Review)

Posted by ad on Jul 9, 2005 in Film | 0 comments

This post originally appeared on Screen*Play.

That not so fresh feeling.

Last week I caught a screening of thriller Dark Water (Touchstone Pictures) based on a Japanese film by the team behind The Ring and The Ring Two. With Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly and nominee John C. Reilly, I had high hopes for this film, but instead ended up feeling dirty and disappointed.

Dark Water is set in my hometown of NYC, on Roosevelt Island. Apparently, this area of the city has it’s own weather system as it rains there non-stop, a lot like Seattle, where Dahlia (Connelly) hails from.

Recently divorced and broke, Dahlia and daughter Ceci take residence in a tiny one bedroom apartment rented by Mr. Murray played wonderfully by John C. Reilly. Nice views of Manhattan aside, its the nasty leak coming from the place upstairs of, you guessed it, dark water, that is the subject of the  film.

It’s brown, real brown. What does this make you think of? When management is slow to fix the problem, Dahlia takes matters into her own hands and makes her way into the apartment above, which is completely flooded with dirty water. It’s pouring from faucets and the toilet. Problem – brown water, coming from the toilet, up to ones calves…outta there. Not so in Dark Water. I was at the edge of my seat, not from fear, but wanting to run home and take a shower.  This is just the beginning of the slow build to the film’s climax.

The location, music and cinematography create an ominous and depressing backdrop for Dahlia and Ceci’s sad life but, apart from one scene that caused my movie companion to jump in his seat, the fright factor is a 3 with an ick factor of 10.  I hoped that after all that effort to gross us out, the pay off would be a mind-blowing plot twist, but it wasn’t. I’ll put it this way – if you saw either The Ring or the Ring Two, it’s a slight variation of one of those films.

Off to wash my hands.