Dark Water

Starring Jennifer Connelly, Ariel Gade, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott and Pete Postlethwaite

Written by Rafael Yglesias, based on the Kôji Suzuki novel

Directed by Walter Salles

Dark Water, the latest Japanese remake to hit our shores, exploits this fear of plumbing quite effectively. The problem is, those of us who go to the movies regularly have already seen this film— only when we saw it, it was called The Ring. For all its considerable atmosphere and effort, Dark Water can’t escape the shadow of Samara, The Ring’s own waterlogged villain. The result is another rehash of familiar themes that, while intermittently hitting a few high notes, amounts ultimately to a minor fugue.

The story concerns recently divorced Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) and her cute-as-a-bug daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade), who are faced with the prospect of finding an affordable apartment in New York in the midst of a bitter custody battle with Dahlia’s ex-husband Kyle (Dougray Scott). A hot tip leads them to an apartment complex on Roosevelt Island, the 147-acre patch of land between Manhattan and Queens that here, thanks to the muted pallet of blue-grays, gunmetal grays, slate grays, battleship grays and gray grays of cinematographer Affonso Beato, resembles a Soviet-style gulag with permanent storm clouds hovering overhead. I’m sure it’s a lot nicer there in the spring.

Mr. Murray (John C. Reilly), the complex manager, shows them a bandbox of an apartment on the 9th floor that would send most of us scrambling for the suburbs. But Ceci develops an immediate attraction to the place, which sways Dahlia. Plus, it’s less than $1000 a month, it’s near a good school and it’s a short tram ride from Manhattan. Sure, there’s a bad plumbing leak above Ceci’s room that has left a horrid black water stain in one corner of the ceiling. But Mr. Murray assures Dahlia that the creepy old building super Mr. Veek (Pete Postlethwaite), who looks like a rejected Scooy-Doo villain, is on the case.

Of course, things quickly go awry. Ceci finds a Hello Kitty backpack on the roof, which may have a connection to her imaginary friend Natasha. The building elevator has a mind of its own. The washing machines in the basement ooze malevolence. The 10th floor apartment above Dahlia’s is full of secrets that are best left undiscovered. And that water stain on the ceiling keeps getting bigger— it may in fact be alive. But Dahlia is the product of an abusive childhood, suffers from crippling migraines and may harbor a sublimated fear of motherhood. How much of what she experiences is real, and how much of it is in her head?

Brazilian director Walter Salles, the indie-film journeyman who made his bones at the helm of the elegant Central Station and the brash Motorcycle Diaries, excels at lathering on the atmosphere. By keeping the camera close on his star, Salles filters the spooky goings-on in the decrepit apartment complex through a gauzy filter of subjectivity. The film is covered in a veneer of naturalism that helps steer it away from the usual Hollywood excesses; even the crazy shit at work in apartment 10-F upstairs has the feel of documentary.

That understated naturalistic sheen is Dark Water’s greatest strength, and its key performances are complimentary. If it’s verisimilitude you’re after, then Jennifer Connelly is your go-to actress; as in her defining performance in House of Sand and Fog, she excels at a sort of resigned ennui that makes us believe we’re eavesdropping on her life instead of watching a performance. Adorable little Ariel Gade has the thankless task of tugging on our heartstrings even as she serves as the picture’s heavily manipulated McGuffin, and while she’s no Haley Joel Osment, she holds her own.

But that’s about it for the superlatives. It takes an awfully long time for Dark Water to creak into motion, and when it finally does start moving it putts forward with all the momentum of a golf cart. The connection between this film’s sundry elements never becomes clear, and it raises questions that it never bothers to answer. Is ex-husband Kyle involved somehow in a plot to drive Dahlia insane? Beats me. Why does Dahlia’s rumpled attorney (Tim Roth) work out of his car and lie about having a family? I dunno. Plot threads are begun and then left to unravel. Things happen to Dahlia only because the conventions of the ghost story require something to happen; the business with the elevator and the washing machines are merely beats in the script, nothing more. Meanwhile, the dark water of the title flows in copious quantities, but to what end? It’s a metaphor for… what? Amniotic fluid? Menstrual blood? Or could it be… Satan?

But the real problem with Dark Water is that it’s based on a novel by Japanese author Kôji Suzuki, author of The Ring, and the film version by director Hideo Nakata, who directed both the original Ringu and this year’s Hollywood remake The Ring 2. These guys have, If you’ll pardon the expression, gone back to the well one too many times. There are so many similarities between The Ring and Dark Water that the latter is essentially a remake of the former. Both films center on raven-haired child ghosts with abusive pasts who exhibit a supernatural ability to express their anger through water. The ghosts in both films center their attention on a single mother and her child. At the moment of truth, both mothers will be forced to choose between the lives of their children and their own sanity. The differences are merely window dressing.

So really, I’m ready to declare a short moratorium on J-Horror remakes. The film wants to overwhelm you with watery, gothic dread, but it’s rather like getting a tongue bath from your cat— cute for about 30 seconds, but then you’re done. You may feel differently, particularly if you usually think twice before you turn on the faucet or stick your hand down the garbage disposal. For my part, I was longing for a bottle of Liquid Plumber.

July 10, 2005
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