Dark Water [2003]
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • A chilling tale of loss
  • Very effective.
  • Terrifyingly tense and suspensful
  • oh dear
  • ONE OF THE BEST JAPANESE HORROR FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN
Dark Water [2003]
Starring: Hitomi Kuroki , Rio Kanno , Mirei Oguchi , Asami Mizukawa , and Fumiyo Kohinata
Director: Hideo Nakata , and Kyle Jones (IV)
Manufacturer: Tartan Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000DCY00
Release Date: 2003-11-24
Dark Water [2003]

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

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars A chilling tale of loss.......2008-02-25

I found this film very engaging. The director very cleverly uses water and the surrounding emptiness to good effect, giving the film a lonely and rather creepy feel. Needless to say a very wet feel also. I will definately be going back to this one, curious to work out how the director creates such a feeling with so little. I would definately recommend it and although the ending is strange i would not say it was a bad ending. I thought it was fine considering.

5 out of 5 stars Very effective........2008-01-23

Much better than the hollywood remake. This is another atmospheric and deeply satisfying Japanese horror. A great follow up to the Ringu series.

5 out of 5 stars Terrifyingly tense and suspensful.......2007-11-22

A ghost story... scary, suspensful, creepy, disturbing... Jolty at every opportunity. Nail-biting horror. Top notch fear... A must-see movie. It never begins to fail its aim: to get your adrenaline pumping. A very unique ghost flick, and incredibly well-made. Rather emotional, and it focuses well in a separated/single mother relationship with daughter. A must-see movie. Watch... but be ready for some nerve-shredding terror!

1 out of 5 stars oh dear.......2007-08-08

dull,bland,unispired,plodding,slow,boring,repetitive.
pick any of the above to describe this film. the acting is terrible,the direction is average and repetitive and also very cliched. there is nothing new on display here.the first half,well make that 3/4 of the film sets the basic story and is very,very dull, the key to these types of horror are that they are atmospheric and creepy,this film is neither of those things.
the special effects are terrible and i wish i had never seen the damm thing.
the basic story is about a mother and a daughter and the mysterious diappearance of another young girl in the same building.
somehow it takes the director just over an hour to tell us that!!!!
utter nonsense,vastly overrated and not even at all scary in any shape or form.
if you want to see a good example of this type of asian horror watch "ring" its much,much better.
avoid this pile of s*** at all costs.

4 out of 5 stars ONE OF THE BEST JAPANESE HORROR FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN.......2007-08-07

Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is in the middle of a nasty divorce from her husband, Kunio Hamada (Fumiyo Kohinata). The biggest issue of contention is their daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). Kunio accuses Yoshimi of being unstable, and he seems to have a point. Still, Yoshimi is awarded at least temporary custody of Ikuko. We see her finding an apartment for her and Ikuko to live in. They pick a less-than-ideal apartment, because it is affordable. Soon after, strange occurrences begin. Yoshimi's bedroom ceiling is developing a water stain. Mysterious puddles of water appear in different locations. An unusual item keeps appearing, despite attempts to discard it. Yoshimi periodically sees a strange girl, but only in glimpses. Ikuko begins acting oddly. On top of all this, Yoshimi is trying to go back to work, and she's having trouble balancing that with taking care of Ikuko. Things are spiraling out of control. Are the problems due to Yoshimi's divorce, or is there also something more sinister or supernatural going on?

Despite Dark Water's relatively overt similarities to a number of other filmic works, this is one of director Hideo Nakata's most successful films--at least as good as his famed Ringu (1998), if not better. I came awfully close to giving Dark Water a 10 out of 10, and can easily see myself raising my score on subsequent viewings. Many facets of the film do not open up until you see them again. For example, when fact checking something about the film shortly before writing this review, I re-watched the beginning; the opening credits are extremely eerie, but the full impact doesn't hit you until after you've seen the film once and more fully realize what you're looking at while watching the first shot.

The similarities include quite a few thematic resemblances to Ringu, which shouldn't be surprising considering that not only is Nakata the director for both films, they are both based on novels by the man who is often called "The Japanese Stephen King", at least in the Japanese press--Koji Suzuki.

Like Ringu, Dark Water's menace comes in the form of a young, long haired Japanese girl who makes frequent, mysterious appearances. Girls may be the focus because of irony--they're supposed to be cute (as is Kanno, who turns in a great performance along with her more adult fellow cast) and innocent. A girl menace should therefore be that much more unnerving.

The menace is often accompanied by water. Water was important symbolism in Ringu, too. I would venture a guess that Nakata and/or Suzuki have a fear of water. It might be more impersonal, too. Water is a powerful force, both easily adapting to its surroundings and easily molding them. It permeates much of the world. As such, it's a good visual symbol for kami, which is the Shinto "essence" or "beingness" that permeates everything, and (among many other things) can be godlike, or the soul of a dead human, or tsumi, a "pollution" form of kami which could perhaps be also at least symbolically cleansed by water.

Another important symbolic commonality shared by both Ringu and Dark Water is that of claustrophobic spaces. These occur in Ringu in forms like the well, closets and crawl spaces. Dark Water has the elevator and a structure for which you'll only realize the importance near the end of the film. Water combined with the elevator also enables Nakata to give a nice nod to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) in one scene.

A further similarity to Ringu is that Dark Water is just as concerned with familial problems as it is concerned with horror. In fact, the horror may only be symbolic or may only be a metaphor for familial problems (in the Ringu/Ring films, this is made even more clear in Nakata's latest, American Ring film--The Ring Two, 2005). Both feature a young mother struggling to maintain a normal existence with her only child. In Dark Water, it is particularly easy to see the horror elements as mere metaphors for Yoshimi's psychological decline and the effects it has on her daughter, which echo her own problematic childhood--we learn that her parents were also divorced when she was young, and the opening dramatic scene of the film shows Yoshimi as a child, waiting at school for someone to pick her up. We also hear her comment that her mother was "bad".

This is not to say that Dark Water has no focus on horror. Nakata's well known deliberate pacing is perfect here. The spooky events are subtle but unnerving, and Nakata achieves some amazing build-ups, such as the scene in the elevator near the end of the film, with a particularly frightening reveal. This reveal works as well as it does because Nakata takes so long to get there. He builds tension through stretching out pregnant pauses until the viewer is ready to burst. There are many such scenes throughout the film.

Dark Water also succeeds because the story is kept relatively simple and straightforward. Unlike typical American films, much of the story is "told" through implication. As a viewer, you are frequently left to figure out decisions and events based on seemingly innocuous comments in an antecedent scene followed by relationship and scenario changes in a following scene. In other words, you have to make assumptions about what has happened. That might sound complex, but the aim, which is wonderfully achieved, is actually to simplify the events on screen. Although that famous Asian horror film dream logic is still present in the supernatural events, it doesn't usurp the plot, which continues to gradually hone in on and build up the tension between Yoshimi, her husband, Ikuko, the mystery girl, and the apartment complex. The ending, which comments on all of those elements and the profound ways that they've changed, is particularly uncanny and poignant.
Pink Floyd - The Making of The Dark Side Of The Moon [2003]
Average customer rating: Not rated
    Pink Floyd - The Making of The Dark Side Of The Moon [2003]
    Starring: David Gilmour , Nick Mason , Roger Waters , and Richard Wright (II)
    Director: Adrian Maben
    Manufacturer: Eagle Rock Entertainment
    ProductGroup: DVD
    Binding: DVD

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    ASIN: B00009QNXX
    Release Date: 2003-08-25
    Pink Floyd - The Making of The Dark Side Of The Moon [2003]

    Amazon.co.uk Review

    The most phenomenal recording in rock & roll history is thoroughly examined in Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon. The Floyd's 1973 masterpiece remained on bestseller charts for nearly 14 years, and its enduring importance is honoured here by all four members of Pink Floyd and key personnel (engineer Alan Parsons, mixing supervisor Chris Thomas, sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson and others) who played essential roles in the landmark album's creation.

    Produced for the Classic Albums series, this thorough and thought-provoking study highlights a track-by-track dissection of the LP's master tapes (including the spoken-word passages that bookend the album), superbly interlaced with archival footage, early demo tapes, concert animations and latter-day acoustic performances by David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Richard Wright to demonstrate each track's contribution to the final mix--a sonic exploration that extends to the illuminating bonus features. Informative interviews abound (including Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke), and much-deserved credit is given to saxophonist Dick Parry, solo vocalist Clare Torry and former Columbia Records chairman Bhaskar Menon, who fostered the album's US commercial success. For Floyd fans, musicians and studio technicians alike, this is a must-have addition to any DVD library. --Jeff Shannon
    Dark Waters [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
    Average customer rating: Not rated
      Dark Waters [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
      Starring: Lorenzo Lamas , and Simmone Mackinnon
      Director: Phillip J. Roth
      Manufacturer: First Look Pictures
      ProductGroup: DVD
      Binding: DVD

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      ASIN: B000A2X3NE
      Release Date: 2005-08-24
      Dark Waters [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
      Dark Water [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
      Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
      • A chilling tale of loss
      • Very effective.
      • Terrifyingly tense and suspensful
      • oh dear
      • ONE OF THE BEST JAPANESE HORROR FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN
      Dark Water [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
      Starring: Hitomi Kuroki , Rio Kanno , Mirei Oguchi , Asami Mizukawa , and Fumiyo Kohinata
      Director: Hideo Nakata , and Kyle Jones (IV)
      Manufacturer: A.D.V. Films
      ProductGroup: DVD
      Binding: DVD

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      ASIN: B0009KA2UO
      Release Date: 2005-06-21
      Dark Water [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

      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

      Customer Reviews:

      4 out of 5 stars A chilling tale of loss.......2008-02-25

      I found this film very engaging. The director very cleverly uses water and the surrounding emptiness to good effect, giving the film a lonely and rather creepy feel. Needless to say a very wet feel also. I will definately be going back to this one, curious to work out how the director creates such a feeling with so little. I would definately recommend it and although the ending is strange i would not say it was a bad ending. I thought it was fine considering.

      5 out of 5 stars Very effective........2008-01-23

      Much better than the hollywood remake. This is another atmospheric and deeply satisfying Japanese horror. A great follow up to the Ringu series.

      5 out of 5 stars Terrifyingly tense and suspensful.......2007-11-22

      A ghost story... scary, suspensful, creepy, disturbing... Jolty at every opportunity. Nail-biting horror. Top notch fear... A must-see movie. It never begins to fail its aim: to get your adrenaline pumping. A very unique ghost flick, and incredibly well-made. Rather emotional, and it focuses well in a separated/single mother relationship with daughter. A must-see movie. Watch... but be ready for some nerve-shredding terror!

      1 out of 5 stars oh dear.......2007-08-08

      dull,bland,unispired,plodding,slow,boring,repetitive.
      pick any of the above to describe this film. the acting is terrible,the direction is average and repetitive and also very cliched. there is nothing new on display here.the first half,well make that 3/4 of the film sets the basic story and is very,very dull, the key to these types of horror are that they are atmospheric and creepy,this film is neither of those things.
      the special effects are terrible and i wish i had never seen the damm thing.
      the basic story is about a mother and a daughter and the mysterious diappearance of another young girl in the same building.
      somehow it takes the director just over an hour to tell us that!!!!
      utter nonsense,vastly overrated and not even at all scary in any shape or form.
      if you want to see a good example of this type of asian horror watch "ring" its much,much better.
      avoid this pile of s*** at all costs.

      4 out of 5 stars ONE OF THE BEST JAPANESE HORROR FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN.......2007-08-07

      Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is in the middle of a nasty divorce from her husband, Kunio Hamada (Fumiyo Kohinata). The biggest issue of contention is their daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). Kunio accuses Yoshimi of being unstable, and he seems to have a point. Still, Yoshimi is awarded at least temporary custody of Ikuko. We see her finding an apartment for her and Ikuko to live in. They pick a less-than-ideal apartment, because it is affordable. Soon after, strange occurrences begin. Yoshimi's bedroom ceiling is developing a water stain. Mysterious puddles of water appear in different locations. An unusual item keeps appearing, despite attempts to discard it. Yoshimi periodically sees a strange girl, but only in glimpses. Ikuko begins acting oddly. On top of all this, Yoshimi is trying to go back to work, and she's having trouble balancing that with taking care of Ikuko. Things are spiraling out of control. Are the problems due to Yoshimi's divorce, or is there also something more sinister or supernatural going on?

      Despite Dark Water's relatively overt similarities to a number of other filmic works, this is one of director Hideo Nakata's most successful films--at least as good as his famed Ringu (1998), if not better. I came awfully close to giving Dark Water a 10 out of 10, and can easily see myself raising my score on subsequent viewings. Many facets of the film do not open up until you see them again. For example, when fact checking something about the film shortly before writing this review, I re-watched the beginning; the opening credits are extremely eerie, but the full impact doesn't hit you until after you've seen the film once and more fully realize what you're looking at while watching the first shot.

      The similarities include quite a few thematic resemblances to Ringu, which shouldn't be surprising considering that not only is Nakata the director for both films, they are both based on novels by the man who is often called "The Japanese Stephen King", at least in the Japanese press--Koji Suzuki.

      Like Ringu, Dark Water's menace comes in the form of a young, long haired Japanese girl who makes frequent, mysterious appearances. Girls may be the focus because of irony--they're supposed to be cute (as is Kanno, who turns in a great performance along with her more adult fellow cast) and innocent. A girl menace should therefore be that much more unnerving.

      The menace is often accompanied by water. Water was important symbolism in Ringu, too. I would venture a guess that Nakata and/or Suzuki have a fear of water. It might be more impersonal, too. Water is a powerful force, both easily adapting to its surroundings and easily molding them. It permeates much of the world. As such, it's a good visual symbol for kami, which is the Shinto "essence" or "beingness" that permeates everything, and (among many other things) can be godlike, or the soul of a dead human, or tsumi, a "pollution" form of kami which could perhaps be also at least symbolically cleansed by water.

      Another important symbolic commonality shared by both Ringu and Dark Water is that of claustrophobic spaces. These occur in Ringu in forms like the well, closets and crawl spaces. Dark Water has the elevator and a structure for which you'll only realize the importance near the end of the film. Water combined with the elevator also enables Nakata to give a nice nod to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) in one scene.

      A further similarity to Ringu is that Dark Water is just as concerned with familial problems as it is concerned with horror. In fact, the horror may only be symbolic or may only be a metaphor for familial problems (in the Ringu/Ring films, this is made even more clear in Nakata's latest, American Ring film--The Ring Two, 2005). Both feature a young mother struggling to maintain a normal existence with her only child. In Dark Water, it is particularly easy to see the horror elements as mere metaphors for Yoshimi's psychological decline and the effects it has on her daughter, which echo her own problematic childhood--we learn that her parents were also divorced when she was young, and the opening dramatic scene of the film shows Yoshimi as a child, waiting at school for someone to pick her up. We also hear her comment that her mother was "bad".

      This is not to say that Dark Water has no focus on horror. Nakata's well known deliberate pacing is perfect here. The spooky events are subtle but unnerving, and Nakata achieves some amazing build-ups, such as the scene in the elevator near the end of the film, with a particularly frightening reveal. This reveal works as well as it does because Nakata takes so long to get there. He builds tension through stretching out pregnant pauses until the viewer is ready to burst. There are many such scenes throughout the film.

      Dark Water also succeeds because the story is kept relatively simple and straightforward. Unlike typical American films, much of the story is "told" through implication. As a viewer, you are frequently left to figure out decisions and events based on seemingly innocuous comments in an antecedent scene followed by relationship and scenario changes in a following scene. In other words, you have to make assumptions about what has happened. That might sound complex, but the aim, which is wonderfully achieved, is actually to simplify the events on screen. Although that famous Asian horror film dream logic is still present in the supernatural events, it doesn't usurp the plot, which continues to gradually hone in on and build up the tension between Yoshimi, her husband, Ikuko, the mystery girl, and the apartment complex. The ending, which comments on all of those elements and the profound ways that they've changed, is particularly uncanny and poignant.
      Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
      Average customer rating: Not rated
        Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
        Starring: Roger Waters , Storm Thorgerson , Nigel Williamson , David Fricke (II) , and David Gilmour
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        Manufacturer: Eagle Vision USA
        ProductGroup: DVD
        Binding: DVD

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        ASIN: B0000AOV85
        Release Date: 2003-09-02
        Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
        Dark Waters [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
        Average customer rating: Not rated
          Dark Waters [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
          Starring: Lorenzo Lamas , and Simmone Mackinnon
          Director: Phillip J. Roth
          Manufacturer: DEJ Productions
          ProductGroup: DVD
          Binding: DVD

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          ASIN: B0000D0YVG
          Release Date: 2003-12-09
          Dark Waters [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
          Dark Waters [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
          Average customer rating: Not rated
            Dark Waters [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
            Lorenzo Lamas
            Manufacturer: Dej Productions
            ProductGroup: DVD
            Binding: DVD

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            ASIN: 630800605X
            Release Date: 2004-03-02
            Dark Waters [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
            Dark Water [2003]
            Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
            • A chilling tale of loss
            • Very effective.
            • Terrifyingly tense and suspensful
            • oh dear
            • ONE OF THE BEST JAPANESE HORROR FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN
            Dark Water [2003]
            Starring: Hitomi Kuroki , Rio Kanno , Mirei Oguchi , Asami Mizukawa , and Fumiyo Kohinata
            Director: Hideo Nakata , and Kyle Jones (IV)
            Manufacturer: Umbrella Entertainment
            ProductGroup: DVD
            Binding: DVD

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            1. Ju-On - The Grudge [2003] Ju-On - The Grudge [2003]
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            4. The Eye (Collector's Edition) [2002] The Eye (Collector's Edition) [2002]
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            ASIN: B000CCR6OY
            Release Date: 2004-07-21
            Dark Water [2003]

            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

            Customer Reviews:

            4 out of 5 stars A chilling tale of loss.......2008-02-25

            I found this film very engaging. The director very cleverly uses water and the surrounding emptiness to good effect, giving the film a lonely and rather creepy feel. Needless to say a very wet feel also. I will definately be going back to this one, curious to work out how the director creates such a feeling with so little. I would definately recommend it and although the ending is strange i would not say it was a bad ending. I thought it was fine considering.

            5 out of 5 stars Very effective........2008-01-23

            Much better than the hollywood remake. This is another atmospheric and deeply satisfying Japanese horror. A great follow up to the Ringu series.

            5 out of 5 stars Terrifyingly tense and suspensful.......2007-11-22

            A ghost story... scary, suspensful, creepy, disturbing... Jolty at every opportunity. Nail-biting horror. Top notch fear... A must-see movie. It never begins to fail its aim: to get your adrenaline pumping. A very unique ghost flick, and incredibly well-made. Rather emotional, and it focuses well in a separated/single mother relationship with daughter. A must-see movie. Watch... but be ready for some nerve-shredding terror!

            1 out of 5 stars oh dear.......2007-08-08

            dull,bland,unispired,plodding,slow,boring,repetitive.
            pick any of the above to describe this film. the acting is terrible,the direction is average and repetitive and also very cliched. there is nothing new on display here.the first half,well make that 3/4 of the film sets the basic story and is very,very dull, the key to these types of horror are that they are atmospheric and creepy,this film is neither of those things.
            the special effects are terrible and i wish i had never seen the damm thing.
            the basic story is about a mother and a daughter and the mysterious diappearance of another young girl in the same building.
            somehow it takes the director just over an hour to tell us that!!!!
            utter nonsense,vastly overrated and not even at all scary in any shape or form.
            if you want to see a good example of this type of asian horror watch "ring" its much,much better.
            avoid this pile of s*** at all costs.

            4 out of 5 stars ONE OF THE BEST JAPANESE HORROR FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN.......2007-08-07

            Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is in the middle of a nasty divorce from her husband, Kunio Hamada (Fumiyo Kohinata). The biggest issue of contention is their daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). Kunio accuses Yoshimi of being unstable, and he seems to have a point. Still, Yoshimi is awarded at least temporary custody of Ikuko. We see her finding an apartment for her and Ikuko to live in. They pick a less-than-ideal apartment, because it is affordable. Soon after, strange occurrences begin. Yoshimi's bedroom ceiling is developing a water stain. Mysterious puddles of water appear in different locations. An unusual item keeps appearing, despite attempts to discard it. Yoshimi periodically sees a strange girl, but only in glimpses. Ikuko begins acting oddly. On top of all this, Yoshimi is trying to go back to work, and she's having trouble balancing that with taking care of Ikuko. Things are spiraling out of control. Are the problems due to Yoshimi's divorce, or is there also something more sinister or supernatural going on?

            Despite Dark Water's relatively overt similarities to a number of other filmic works, this is one of director Hideo Nakata's most successful films--at least as good as his famed Ringu (1998), if not better. I came awfully close to giving Dark Water a 10 out of 10, and can easily see myself raising my score on subsequent viewings. Many facets of the film do not open up until you see them again. For example, when fact checking something about the film shortly before writing this review, I re-watched the beginning; the opening credits are extremely eerie, but the full impact doesn't hit you until after you've seen the film once and more fully realize what you're looking at while watching the first shot.

            The similarities include quite a few thematic resemblances to Ringu, which shouldn't be surprising considering that not only is Nakata the director for both films, they are both based on novels by the man who is often called "The Japanese Stephen King", at least in the Japanese press--Koji Suzuki.

            Like Ringu, Dark Water's menace comes in the form of a young, long haired Japanese girl who makes frequent, mysterious appearances. Girls may be the focus because of irony--they're supposed to be cute (as is Kanno, who turns in a great performance along with her more adult fellow cast) and innocent. A girl menace should therefore be that much more unnerving.

            The menace is often accompanied by water. Water was important symbolism in Ringu, too. I would venture a guess that Nakata and/or Suzuki have a fear of water. It might be more impersonal, too. Water is a powerful force, both easily adapting to its surroundings and easily molding them. It permeates much of the world. As such, it's a good visual symbol for kami, which is the Shinto "essence" or "beingness" that permeates everything, and (among many other things) can be godlike, or the soul of a dead human, or tsumi, a "pollution" form of kami which could perhaps be also at least symbolically cleansed by water.

            Another important symbolic commonality shared by both Ringu and Dark Water is that of claustrophobic spaces. These occur in Ringu in forms like the well, closets and crawl spaces. Dark Water has the elevator and a structure for which you'll only realize the importance near the end of the film. Water combined with the elevator also enables Nakata to give a nice nod to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) in one scene.

            A further similarity to Ringu is that Dark Water is just as concerned with familial problems as it is concerned with horror. In fact, the horror may only be symbolic or may only be a metaphor for familial problems (in the Ringu/Ring films, this is made even more clear in Nakata's latest, American Ring film--The Ring Two, 2005). Both feature a young mother struggling to maintain a normal existence with her only child. In Dark Water, it is particularly easy to see the horror elements as mere metaphors for Yoshimi's psychological decline and the effects it has on her daughter, which echo her own problematic childhood--we learn that her parents were also divorced when she was young, and the opening dramatic scene of the film shows Yoshimi as a child, waiting at school for someone to pick her up. We also hear her comment that her mother was "bad".

            This is not to say that Dark Water has no focus on horror. Nakata's well known deliberate pacing is perfect here. The spooky events are subtle but unnerving, and Nakata achieves some amazing build-ups, such as the scene in the elevator near the end of the film, with a particularly frightening reveal. This reveal works as well as it does because Nakata takes so long to get there. He builds tension through stretching out pregnant pauses until the viewer is ready to burst. There are many such scenes throughout the film.

            Dark Water also succeeds because the story is kept relatively simple and straightforward. Unlike typical American films, much of the story is "told" through implication. As a viewer, you are frequently left to figure out decisions and events based on seemingly innocuous comments in an antecedent scene followed by relationship and scenario changes in a following scene. In other words, you have to make assumptions about what has happened. That might sound complex, but the aim, which is wonderfully achieved, is actually to simplify the events on screen. Although that famous Asian horror film dream logic is still present in the supernatural events, it doesn't usurp the plot, which continues to gradually hone in on and build up the tension between Yoshimi, her husband, Ikuko, the mystery girl, and the apartment complex. The ending, which comments on all of those elements and the profound ways that they've changed, is particularly uncanny and poignant.

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