Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10964 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-11-24
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Dark Water is Japanese horror auteur Hideo Nakata's return to the genre after his Ring cycle made you too scared to watch television ever again. Where Ring dealt with a supernatural force wreaking revenge via technology, Dark Water is a much more traditional ghost story. After winning a custody battle for her daughter, single mother Yoshimi moves into what she thinks is the perfect apartment with her daughter Hitomi. No sooner have they unpacked than strange things begin to disturb their new life. A water leak from the supposedly abandoned apartment above gets bigger and bigger, a child's satchel reappears even though Yoshimi throws it away several times, and she is haunted by the image of a child wearing a yellow mackintosh who bears a striking resemblance to a young girl who disappeared several years before.

The conventional narrative follows Yoshimi's increasingly desperate attempts to discover who or what force is haunting her daughter, but the story's execution is far from predictable. Nakata is the master of understated suspense: there's always a feeling of motiveless malignancy that runs like an undercurrent through his films--far more frightening than out and out shocks--and here he also practically drowns his audience in water imagery. The film is saturated; the relentless dripping in the apartment, the constant rain outside and the deliberately washed-out photography make any colour, such as the yellow coat, seem incongruous and unsettling. Nakata also clears the film of unnecessary characters--this is an almost deserted Tokyo--preferring to concentrate the action on Yoshimi's rising hysteria as she struggles to understand what is happening and how to save her daughter. Granted, the special effects are somewhat unconvincing and the ending confused, but even so the result is a stylish and disquieting chiller that will do for bathtubs what Ring did for video recorders. --Kristen Bowditch

Synopsis
From the director of the Japanese horror classic RING (remade successfully by Hollywood as THE RING) comes this equally sinister and edgy ghost story about a mother and daughter whose run down apartment has unexplained damp patches on the walls and ghostly apparitions from a young girl.

Customer Reviews

Eagerly anticipated
Hideo Nakato (Ring series) is a genius who manages to make proper sinister spooky horror that doesn't rely on gore or jump moments. His tools are music, lighting and long camera shots down dark corridors, and all give the sense that *this* creeping evil is particularly malevolent. Its classic horror that plays on primordial human fear.

The story centres around a mother struggling to make a new life for herself and her daughter amidst a messy divorce. The strangeness begins when they move to a new part of the city, a new school and a new apartment with a perpetually leaky ceiling! I won't give any more of the story away than that, suffice to say I couldn't walk past so much as a puddle after viewing it without wanting to run screaming down dark ill advised alleyways.

If you enjoyed Ring you most certainly won't be disappointed by this. A definite must.

saw it in the cinema pre-release....WHOAH!!!
this was the first Japanese horror film i ever saw...

i've noticed since, with films such as Ring (and the sequal and prequal)that the Japanese generally do horror VERY differently to the west...nowhere is it more apparrent than this masterpiece.

where western horror movies rely on "orgasm entertainment" and in-your-face frights, Dark Water builds the tension very slowly, with the ominous reappearing figure, the schoolbag, and the water tank, all building a tense, confused apprehension throughout the film, and the last 30-40 minutes are probably the most terrifying i've ever seen. ever.

if you like the edge of your seat to be well-worn and slightly stained, this movie is DEFINATELY for you.

i would reccomend to to anyone, especially people who "don't like horror movies"

they've remade it in American now. Taking the disgusting slop that was "The Ring" i'm not going to waste my time with it.

sacreliege, if you ask me!

This is how it's done
It's official. No one can tell a ghost story better than the Japanese, and no Japanese better than Hideo Nakata. "Dark Water" bears the trademarks of Nakata's art: understated, suggestive, subliminal, gentle, profound. Nakata's films are not just ghost stories: they are stories of loss, abandonment, abuse, loveless lives and loneliness. The atmosphere of "Dark Water" is a cross between the "Ring" and Miike Takashi's "Audition". One viewer has declared himself baffled by the end of the story: to me it made perfect sense... The link with "Don't Look Now" does not go much deeper than the figure of the girl. Nakata is a master. Recommended point blanc.