Inexplicable, and ultimately terrifying, events plague a mother (Hitomi Kuroki) involved in a bitter divorce and her young daughter (Rio Kanno) after they move into a run-down apartment building. The film is an effective psychological horror but cleaves too closely to director Hideo Nakata's previous hit 'Ringu' (1998) to feel particularly novel (especially the supernatural water-imagery). Kuroki is very good as the desperate mother frightened of losing her child, at first to mundane forces but ultimately to the horror that inhabits the building, and Kanno is very low-key and unaffected as her as her six-year old daughter. The film is more creepy than scary and Hideo Nakata makes very good use of subtle changes and fleeting glimpses to build first tension, then fear. My only complaint is his use of some kind of 'psychic-flashbacks' to fill in plot points (I found the similar scenes in 'Ringu' to be the weakest in the film). Although some viewers didn't like the ending, I thought that it was a satisfying conclusion to the story (although some aspects of the closure scenes didn't really make sense). A good addition to the flood (sorry, couldn't resist) of creepy kid films coming out of Japan (and quickly cloned in Hollywood) - not 'scary' but definitely disquieting.
Review of Dark Water
