A messy divorce forces meek Itsumi (Hitomi Kuroki) to move into a new flat with her six-year-old daughter, Ikuko. The flat has a damp problem, one that is progressively taking over the building. Could this structural fault also explain why Ikuko keeps disappearing?
The frames and incidents of Hideo Nakata films are filled with repetition, similarities and parallels. By forming a rhythmic language of red bags, taxis, droplets and children he creates a world where the overbearing repetitiveness is both the equilibrium and disruption. A CCTV shot of mother and daughter ascending in a lift is shown again and again despite the story moving off in different directions. The subtle changes of shots we have encountered before inspires unease in the audience for what we expect is altered or uncannily the same. The invincibility of such objects and images causes the viewer to relate foreboding with the everyday. When a signifier like the red bag manages to move from scene to scene unaided it imposes omnipresent doom on even the most homely set ups.
The iconography also carries comment about Japanese society and insular family values. The block of flats contains seven deserted, indistinguishable floors elevating Itsumi's alienation and loss of her previous community. When they reach the building to view their new home for the first time, the mother and daughter's umbrella and shoes are the only warm colours within the desolate, urban landscape. Nakata cleverly dissects the effects of divorce on the family and individual without harming his horror. In fact it reinforces the fear factor to a more explicable, if not palatable, level.
The impact this image language has on Nakata's storytelling abilities is symbiotic. By setting up a board game of settings and icons, he can give the audience complex amounts of information in a matter of seconds. The actual explanation for the events in the apartment building (and the way this disruption is resolved) is expressed somewhat remarkably with a minimum of words. No expositions. The dialogue that takes up the film's opening acts is there to set up questions. The estranged husband's excessive extinguishing of his cigarettes alludes to a previous physical abuse and perhaps a current mental one of the female leads. Could these suggestions connect him as an unseen influence in the protagonist's current predicament? Nakata equally offers up other suspects and possibilities so even the most helpful of characters appear to have sinister motives. This evolves the logic puzzle structure further, making the audience constantly interrogate characters and images for motive and meaning. By the time we start to resolve the mysteries that have scared us, the film forces it random elements into a context that is as touching as it is unsettling.
Reader comments about Dark Water
brendi bogard (archbion_2000@yahoo.com) writes:
dark water is the first japanese horror films i ever see.
not only the first but the scaryest and most satest movie i've ever seen
i will never forget the story of a mother and a daughter's tragedy of meeting a lost ghost who is just looking for her mother
Edmund JP (Email address withheld) writes:
Dark Water... one of the scariest horror movie. Not much dialogues, not much action, not much backgroud music, but yet, you can feel the intensity.
charles gary (chasgary@hotmail.com) writes:
Below the surface, Dark Water is a compelling, emotional story about a mother who needs to confront her own issues of abandonment without dragging her daughter down. On top of that is some sensational and downright frightening symbolism. I really enjoyed this movie. I only hope that the core values remain intact if it's ever remade for an American film audience. I think it is scariest at a subliminal level.
Eric Han (Email address withheld) writes:
I actually enjoy watching Hideo Nakata's horror films such as 'Ring'. 'Dark Water' is a good horror film which would make everyone creepy enough because of its scary sounds, wonderful performances by the main characters and perfectly dark athmosphere of the settings. However, I didn't like the ending. I know that you can't expect every single horror film to be ended happily. But, the tragic end of the relationship between mother and her daughter reminded me of rather a kind of melodrama. The movie could have ended in better way.
William McLaughlan, Glasgow (Email address withheld) writes:
I was blown away! I didn't like to imagine that this film would match Nakata's previous works. It definatly does. While structurally, Nakata's approach is completely different here, many of the themes he explores in his Ring films are apparent. Especially the use of the mother/daughter bond to produce startling amounts of tension.
Nakata says he considers himself more a 'celluloid craftsman' than a master story teller. It is easy to see why he makes this statement by watching his films. Everything adds to the terror of what you are watching - screechy soundtrack, subdued colours, pace and lack of dialouge.
My only critisism is the last scene. Possibly the studio intervened to make it more upbeat. If the film had ended ten minuits earlier... well that would have been QUITE SOMETHING!
If you like Ringu or want to watch a horror film that IS actually frightening then this is for you.
Abigail (Email address withheld) writes:
Dark Water was good, not much of a horror, but more of an emotional ghost story. You kind fo feel sorry for the child ghost whose parents had divorced.
However, if you're more into horror, you should watch other Japanese horror films like Ju-On, and Ju-On 2. Ring is also good.
S.N.Dayanidhi,India (dayatech@eth.net) writes:
I happenned to watch this on HBO last night and it is beautful horror movie without any dreadful dirty creatures which never release the same stunning effect as this movie has done.I have not seen horror movies for several years and this japanese movie is a master piece which makes it also an edge of the seat silent thriller.
priya (Email address withheld) writes:
Amazing! Saw it on HBO last night. After the Ring, and now this, I am a die-hard fan of Nakata.
George (Email address withheld) writes:
Splendid ! Worth watching. There is always a strange kind of tension in Nakata's movies like in ' the Ring '. Dark Water is also no exception. Also the mother daughter relationship is so touchy that I felt crying especially the parting seen at the climax
sanjay kale (sskale@mail.com) writes:
I watched this film on HBO yesterday and man was it mindblowing...
I watched it with my wife and i can say that the climax scene was so horror that i closed my eyes till the scene was over...
a masterpiece...
hats off the nakata....
D-day (Email address withheld) writes:
It´s very beautiful and atmospheric film that keeps haunting me days after watching. The casting is great, music and camera-work is great.
Especially the ending gave me serious chills. I think that I´m not the only one who cried in the end
Jason (JJ_JasonJ@Yahoo.co.uk) writes:
I thought the film was good but to be honest i didnt really get it. i know it was a ghost of a child whos parents had a divorce like yoshimi had and her daughter but what exactly was the relationship between yoshimi and the little yoshimi that died, or are they the same person, sum1 throw me a bone here
Jessica Harris (Email address withheld) writes:
I cant believe that i rented this movie because it was a ghost story, but also ended up bawling my eyes out when it had ended (im not like that!). I was completely on the edge for the whole movie i.e. where is she? is she behind that door??....blah,blah.
My mission is to make all my friends watch it before the remake comes out!!!
Im sure i keep seeing a little girl in my bathroom!!!
Jolly (Email address withheld) writes:
To tell you to truth i didnt quite get the movie either...as Jason said what is the bond betwen the gost girl and Ikukos mother and why did she in the end sad to the girl that shes her mother..hm...??:/ But anyway i think the movie is good but i like the Ring more...
Caronae S. Abrigana (caronaeche_13@yahoo.com) writes:
I feel sad at the end of the story because of what her mother did. The fact, that she goes with the ghost just to save her daughter in death which would happen if the ghost havent got her. I wanna get the child and take care of her..hahaha... But im also sad for the mother. Im pity on her. Leaving a child is not an easy thing.. And for a child without a mother is worth dying for. Im happy for Ikuku cause she survived in missing her mother.. Sacrifice hurts me in this movie.. I hate the pain!!
Lee (Email address withheld) writes:
The relationship between the ghost girl and the live mother was not important, there wasn't any specific relationship other than that the ghost was searching, a common belief is that a spirit cant transcend if its soul is ill at ease, the ghost girl needed its mother, if you watch at the end when the mother is in the lift when the her own little girl comes forwards, the ghost gets over protective and starts to squeeze the mother tighther.
Knowing that if she died her own little girl would not be left to live she made the only rational choice a mother would make in that choice.
Mother_Flicker (Email address withheld) writes:
Dark Water needs some filtering and left me & my fellow movie-going bee-otches with some unanswered questions.
WAY too long...WAY too slow...WAY too stupid! I kept convincing myself that the next scene HAD to be the last, only to be disappointed time after time that yet ANOTHER scene was coming.
The one question that is eating at this group of disappointed and pissed off viewers is this: How the hell did they explain the mother's death to everyone? What was the cause of her death?
Seriously, my friends and I were so annoyed with the pure suckiness of this movie that we warned other moviegoers in the theather's parking lot to save their 8 bucks and spend it on ANY of the other 15 movies playing at the theater.
Are we the only ones who feel this way?
Hit me back with some repsonses dawgz!
Mother_Flicker (Email address withheld) writes:
Just to clarify...we're talkin' 'bout the new American version with Jennifer Connelly...not the original Japanese version.
Datael (Email address withheld) writes:
MF, This is a review of the original Japanese version, not the American one.
I can't say I have given the American version two moments of consideration; I refuse to go and see it purely because it's a Hollywood remake of a damn good Japanese film! My loyalties lie with the J-Horror market, not the American faux J-Horror genre. Go Japan!
I always understood it as Yoshimi choosing to take the ghost over her own daughter because throughout the whole we see that Yoshimi is unable to see a child in distress (reference how uneasy Yoshimi is when the two teachers are telling off the young boy in the office for calling his teacher "baka") -- She knew that Ikuko would be looked after by her father, so she took the ghost child under her wing because she needed to know that it wouldn't be alone... Just my two pennies, anyway...
Troy (bottledspider@yahoo.com) writes:
I have only recently seen the Japanese original after first seeing the American version. I don't think the American version is terrible. Jennifer Connelly is a good actress and the story has a surprising integrity as a remake. The great superiority of the Japanese version for me is in the depth of the characters (especially in the mother's journey) and in the overall tone of the movie. The Japanese version is sad and has a kind of beauty in it that is lacking in the slick and aggressive American style. Jennifer Connelly is very convincing a a mother trying to protect her child, but she does not have the poignancy of Hitomi Kuroki.
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