Dark Water

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

After watching Jaws, moviegoers wondered if it was safe to go into the water. After watching Gigli, they wondered if it was safe to go into a movie theater again. And after watching Dark Water, you’ll wonder if it’s safe to turn on the faucet! The year’s first genuinely frightening edge-of-your-seat chiller plays like a supernatural wet dream directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Like The Ring (from the same author) and the far inferior The Grudge, it’s yet another Americanized Japanese ghost story, only this time around, Jennifer Connelly (who looks particularly hot when she’s soaked from top to bottom) and her young daughter move into a creepy Roosevelt Island apartment building where the “drips” are much more than annoying upstairs neighbors. It’s not long before she begins to notice something weird is going on with the water pipes, but gets no help from the very peculiar janitor (Pete Postlethwaite). Of course it doesn’t take a PhD in Horror 101 to know it’s only a matter of time before she takes matters into her own hands. But unlike the many current fright fests which forego story logic to fast-forward to slice-and-dice parties (think High Tension, Hide and Seek, Amityville Horror, anything with Christina Ricci), Brazilian director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) gradually creates a climate of fear and dread building toward a payoff that makes the slower pace of its earlier scenes worthwhile. True, Dark Water doesn’t break new ground, but it accomplishes the one thing to which all blood-spattering cinematic enterprises aspire—it scares the crap out of you.

Share