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Dark Water Director: Hideo Nakata Number of Items: 1 Format: Color, Dolby Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Running Time: 100 minutes Studio: A.D. Vision Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2005-06-21 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.0 "Excellent" I actually enjoyed this film. Perhaps because I first read the fine story, I knew what was coming, but still the directing and acting was so well done that the whole think was very effective. I was scared. What would any of us do or feel if we were basically trapped by lack of money, lack of many job opportunities, lack of family support -- and we found a reasonable apartment, near school and job. We probably wouldn't want to move out at the first sign of weirdness. And wouldn't any of us question our sanity if really seriously strange stuff started to happen? So I think the film was reasonable. And the acting was so well done. Very minimalistic. I especially recommend that anyone who is going to see the remake, first see this one. It is well worth the trouble. "An Intriguing Horror Film Well Worth Watching..." Dark Water begins as a divorce drama where the two adults are in the midst of a custody battle for their daughter Ikuko. During the custody battle the mother, Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki), is trying to find a new apartment and a job that can support her family. When Yoshimi finds an apartment they end up moving and she then discovers that water is seeping through the ceiling into their rooms. The water leakage is just the beginning on some very strange occurrences that take place in the apartment building, and it begins to wear out Yoshimi as she continues the custody battle. However, the bizarre incidents intensify, and Yoshimi is on the verge of losing custody of her daughter. Dark Water is a clever horror film with an interesting plot that builds an empathy around Yoshimi and her daughter as she struggles throughout the film. As the film unfolds, there are some situations on the screen that hint to later scenes. Despite this, Nakata provides a solid cinematic experience to the audience, which is enhanced by the excellent performance by Hitomi Kuroki. "Again, a sad movie." This movie was the best thing. I had read the manga and read the novel. So I watched the Japanese version. It was real good and spooky but sad and lonely. "Ghosts leading to mental disintegration." Tuesday, July 05, 2005 / 4 of 5 / Ghosts leading to mental disintegration. Having seen Ringu and Ju-On I was expecting similar from Dark Water when I picked it up. More linear in its story than Ju-On; it's a somewhat languid, suspenseful build up on some creepy moments. A harried divorcee attempts to provide a home for her daughter whom she has been granted custody of. They arrive at a solemn gray apartment complex and are given the unit directly below a family which lost their daughter a few years ago. Bits and pieces of the mother's mental history come out in custody interviews and we learn that she's struggled with sleep disorders and various mania for a while. All this serves to call into question her validity as the point of reference for the weird happenings including a forever dripping ceiling and the appearance of the mysterious missing girl, whose face is always slightly obscured and blurred. The lead character of the mother is at once sympathetic and pathetic, you can see her disintegration commencing as the movie progresses. While lacking some of the visceral chills of Ringu or Ju-On, it does a good job as a slow descent into madness slash ghost story piece. Recommended. "I liked the payoff(s) on this horror film from Hideo Nakata" I have gotten to the point in watching horror films that when I watched the American production "Dead Birds" I was wondering if this was another adaptation of a Japanese horror film. Apparently the Japanese approach to the genre, which has become well established on this side of the Pacific because of the success of "The Ring" (nee "Ringu") and "The Grudge" (nee "Ju-on"). However, with "Dark Water" ("Honogurai mizu no soko kara") I found myself thinking how different this 2002 effort from director Hideo Nakata (who did the "Ringu" films) from contemporary American efforts in a different way. Too many American horror films go the route of "Jeepers Creepers," where there is a pretty good set up and then the film goes down hill and the payoff is disappointing in the extreme. But with "Dark Water" I was not overly captivated by the set up, but found that the payoff really hit home. At this point let me warn you that when you start watching "Dark Water" on DVD it goes right into the dubbed English track, at which point I start having flashes back to all of the badly dubbed Japanese movies I grew up on (which inevitably leads to thoughts of Woody Allen's "What's Up Tiger Lily?"). My strong recommendation is to stop the film and make sure you have the original Japenese language track and the English captions. Fans of the horror genre should be at the point where they can appreciate the natural language and rhythm of Japanese cast. Most of the key sequences here do not require you to do a lot of reading so it is not a great sacrifice and the nuances of the culture are totally lost in the dubbed version. Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) has divorced her husband and is in a custody battle for her six year old daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). In an attempt to make a new start, mother and daughter move into an apartment, where strange things start happening. The weirdest are the huge water stains that appear on the ceiling and start dripping away and the red children's bag that start popping up every place Yoshimi goes. Then the dead child to whom the bag belongs starts showing up as well. So we have what we would now be thinking of as your basic Japanese ghost story. But there is a bit more going on here as well. You see, Yoshimi has some trouble being a working mom. She needs a job to survive, and too often Ikuko gets lost in the shuffle, which sometimes means the kids is left standing outside her kindergarten waiting for her mother when all of the other kids have left. As you would anticipate, there is an attendant irony in this as well. But the pressure is getting to Yoshimi who thinks that she is slowly going insane, which works well given all of the above. Characters in these sorts of movies often get so scared that they might go insane, complete with wild eyes and mad cackling, but you do not have them questioning their sanity as often. "Dark Water" is a less complicated and more subtle horror story than "The Ringu," which is the obvious point of comparison since Nakata and his co-screenwriter Takashige Ichise did both films (the story here is from a novel by Kôji Suzuki. So it is inevitable that this film seems a lesser effort, but that does not really take away from its effectiveness. When we got to the conclusion I found that I liked what happened, and when the inevitable epilogue reinforced the fact, I liked it even more. I do not think this is a great horror film, but I think it is a solid one and I certainly liked it more than the original "Ju-on."