Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21196 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-11-28
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Danish, English, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 101 minutes

DVD Description
From Hideo Nakata, director of 'Ring', comes this brooding and unsettling masterpiece of horror cinema. In the midst of a custody battle, Yoshimi and her beloved 6 year old daughter move into a creepy apartment. Once there, the discovery of a schoolbag left behind by a mysterious young girl, along with the appearance of damp patches on the ceiling and walls begins to haunt them as rumours circulate of a little girl who disappeared from the apartment above...

From the studio
• Beneath The Surface: The Stories Of Dark Water

• The Sound Of Terror

• Extraordinary Ensemble

• Deleted Scenes

• Analysing Dark Water Sequences

• Interactive Bathroom Scene

Synopsis
Based on a story by Japanese novelist Koji Suzuki and a film by Hideo Nakata (THE RING), DARK WATER is a thrilling exercise in psychological terror. Jennifer Connelly stars as Dahlia, a troubled woman who is battling her husband, Kyle (Dougray Scott), for custody of their young daughter, Ceci (Ariel Gade). Low on cash, Dahlia moves with Ceci into a creepy apartment building on Roosevelt Island in New York City and soon discovers that something very wrong is going on one floor above them. As black water drips down ominously from the ceiling in her bedroom, Dahlia is unable to get help from the real estate agent in charge (the appropriately mysterious John C. Reilly) or his very strange employee (a grizzled Pete Postlethwaite). Around the time Ceci starts going to her new school, she also seems to have developed a very dangerous invisible friend with eerie ties to the apartment above. Believing that Kyle might be gaslighting her, Dahlia turns to a rather curious lawyer (Tim Roth) who appears to work out of his car. All the while, memories of her strained relationship with her mother begin flooding her mind and giving her debilitating migraines. Brazilian director Walter Salles's (THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, CENTRAL STATION) first Hollywood film, DARK WATER cleverly paces itself before unleashing a terrifying conclusion.

Customer Reviews

Is that it??
That's what I was left thinking at the end of this film - 'Is that IT?' I hadn't seen it when it was in the cinema, so I was waiting, with great anticipation for it to come out on DVD! Jennifer Connely is wasted in this film. Her performance is excellent and most of the other characters are well-acted too, but there's only so much they could do with the awful script and poor storyline. I loved the 'Ring' and was expecting something just as un-nerving, but it just never got started! There's so much scope with a story like this, but every chance to scare the pants off the viewer was thrown away. You could see the 'scary' sequences coming a mile off and by the time it got to the end, I was left wondering whether I'd just been watching all the 'deleted scenes' by mistake! My advice would be - don't bother.

Step away from the bath!
I had despaired of ever seeing a decent remake of a J-Horror film. They always rush the story, put in too many effects and add a happy ending. 'Dark Water' is the best of the bunch by a long way. Connolly is allowed the space to expand into the role of the distraught mother and Ariel Gade is exceptional as the little girl lost. None of the parts are overplayed and the camera work is perfect. It owes a lot to the original but manages to westernise it to make it more palatable for the uninitiated fan. Four stars simply because the original is better.

SLOW BUT AN OK ENTRY
Trying to start a new life together, Dahlia, (Jennifer Connelly) and her daughter Ceci, (Ariel Gade) move from their old house in New York City to a new, smaller apartment. As they're attempting to adapt to the new surroundings, Dahlia begins to have strange experiences and visions in the building, which building manager Mr. Murray, (John C. Reilly) only assures her that happens to everyone. When the visions change to feature strange water events in her apartment, she begins to delve into the history of the building and determines to find a way to stop the aura surrounding the building that's targeting both her and her daughter.

The Good News: There was a couple things right about the film. Just like in the original, the location looks impressively gray and depressing. All of this is brought on by the claustrophobic apartment house, the constant dripping, and the incessant rain. What it does better than the original is that this version more effectively suggests Dahlia's fraying sanity amidst the situation, even leaving us frequently believing that she could be imagining it all. Several key scenes make it quite likely. The best is the sequence where, through the surveillance camera on the elevator, there seems to be someone holding an invisible child's hand. A couple of the quick shots of a head passing by in the window are just as creepy, and several attacks near the end are also worthy of mention. This remake is surprisingly faithful to the Japanese version and follows the original story closely on almost all plot points.

The Bad News: There are a couple problems with the film, and the most prominent issue was the pacing. Some are going to be sucked into it right from the opening while others will find it to drag on, and on and on. It's not scary in the slightest, and as an experiment in terror it fails miserably. The atmosphere that could've been drudges up from the images presented could've been great. It makes the average household item or object into something dreadful, but there's hardly anything there to imply that it wants to follow up on it. That brings up the second major problem: it's not all that much of a horror film and is instead a family drama. The horror elements are pushed so far to the background for the family interplay that it feels more at home in the family aisle than in the horror section. It drags out the film, doesn't feel like it belongs in the film and is really unnecessary.

The Final Verdict: Slow and pandering but it looks good when it works. Doesn't really do much to update the flawed original, but it at least gets what the original got right. It's a decision call as to which one is the version to see, as there's not a lot of difference between them.