Reviewed by John Spry

THERE IS nothing new in Hollywood remaking already-produced and successful films: the motives are obvious and one reasoning is that if one film was a hit, then redoing it should also mean a hit. This logic however does not always follow for a variety of reasons – altered story-lines or even altered endings, for instance – that made the original so popular in the first place.


Dark Water is the third Japanese ‘horror’ film to be remade for a mainly US audience. The first three were moderate to successful and recast the main roles and situations from a purely Japanese to US context, (the exception being the Takashi Shimizu (re)directed The Grudge, where only the main characters were recast, while the environment remained Japanese).

With Dark Water, there are a few notable, excellent individual moments that make this film an enjoyable viewing and invites a deeper discussion as to its merits.

It is directed by notable filmmaker Walter Salles, making his US debut helming a film set in the confines of New York and boasting an ensemble cast of American and English actors – all of excellent pedigree – that has at its center Jennifer Connelly, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for A Beautiful Mind in 2003

The film is based around an emotionally charged and albeit slightly disturbed mother Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly), currently engaged in a bitter divorce while searching for a new abide for herself and her daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade). After looking around she is shown an apartment by a broker (the always excellent Mr Cellophane man himself, John C. Reilly) and takes it after a slight con. Almost immediately strange occurrences happen involving her and her daughter. In fact, for not only Japanese horror but Western horror too, the motifs and shocks are par for the course. The film at once seems like a cross between The Changeling (1980) and Don’t Look Now (1973). This is not necessarily a bad omen. As the story and narrative take form it becomes quite obvious whom the ghost of the story is and why she is manifesting herself to both mother and daughter. I will not give the ending away; suffice to say that it is quite unlike the schlock sequel-enticing endings that seem to populate the post-modern horror film.

What remains is what is offered in the opening moments of the film: what all lost children feel when either abandoned by their parents or misplaced in a mall for more than an hour. The feelings that Dahlia experiences initially continue to follow her throughout the film, teasing her and her sanity to the point where she will never put her daughter in harm’s way or abandon her to the world she will be raised in.

After the triumph of The Motorcycle Diaries it is a complete change for Salles to direct a horror yarn, yet there are enough dramatic moments to make this above average in terms of horror films, and the sub-genre of haunted houses or buildings.