Dark Water

You know what’s creepier than those evil-huge-looking monsters in any horror/suspense movies? Evil children! Yes I think they are far more c...

You know what’s creepier than those evil-huge-looking monsters in any horror/suspense movies? Evil children! Yes I think they are far more creepier than those hack-n-slash monsters nor those female ghost having a bad hair day that they decided to haunt the living. Yes, those innocent looking face, beady-eyed, with such sweet yet decietful evil smiles.

Dark Water, dubbed as a psychological horror drama, introduces another one of those evil little critters to grace the horror film genre. Jennifer Connelly stars in a lead role here as a divorced mother, Dahlia, fighting for custody of her child. Hence, she tries to look for a place that would benefit her battle and stumbled on this old apartment that’s just enough for her budget and very close to a school. And this is the start of all things nasty that a very good plumber couldn’t easily fix.

Scare factor for this movie is somewhere on the mild side. You get those occasional angular and dimmed shots to get the mood but it dies down as you find out there’s nothing to be scared about. I think the setting was good and took advantage of the Ceci’s natural child curiousity. Jennifer has been a favourite of mine sine “A Beautiful Mind” and thought she’s a great actress. Her acting here won’t win her any awards but works for the script. Portraying a migraine induced character almost distraught whether all that’s been happening to her is caused by her childhood psychological trauma, her ex-husband driving her insane or there are really unseen forces disturbing them from the upper floor.

I’m surprised to see Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries)name on the directorial credits on this movie. I’m not sure if this is his American debut but it’s far out from his last film. Though I must commend his taking advantage of the actor’s ability and the setting. Still this doesn’t count as one of the better horror films out there. Dark Water is a remake of the Japanese movie created by the same team who did “The Ring” and you’ll notice some similarity to the recent “Ring 2“.

On the local note, this movie also reminded me of the local horror film by Yam Laranas entitled “Sigaw“, which made waves in the US during a horror festival in New York going by the title “The Echo”. Both movie’s delve on the same theme of a haunted apartment but I thought “The Echo” was well made and scarier than Dark Water. If you ever catch it in US don’t miss it.