Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki), a recently divorced mother going through an unpleasant custody battle, moves with her young daughter (Rio Kanno) to an apartment with a water-damaged ceiling. Soon, water is dripping into the bedroom, and a missing girl is appearing and disappearing around the building.
Director Hideo Nakata created a new horror film movement in 1998 with his masterpiece, Ringu. “J-Horror” had the edge over its Western equivalents because it was actually frightening (is there anyone who wakes up in a cold sweat from a nightmare about Jason or Freddy?), at least at first. Japan and Korea stamped out sequels and follow-ups and the world was suddenly jam-packed with ghostly little girls with long black hair. Nakata made the bland, techno-babble-filled Ringu 2, then took a few years off from horror before returning with Dark Water. Working once again from a novel by Ringu scribe, Kôji Suzuki, the result is a satisfying ghost story that breaks no new ground.
The film starts off slowly, focusing on the drama of a woman in a male-dominated society trying to find a job and a place to live. If she makes a mistake, she could lose her child, and while Yoshimi is a good woman, she’s prone to mistakes. She is also poor at explaining her past metal health treatments. Generally lost and frightened, her concern is for her daughter, and perhaps, in beating her ex-husband, at least once.
Except for an initial shock, the switch from drama to ghost story is subtle. Water, in the form of natural rain which reflects her depression and frustration, turns to unnatural puddles and leaks. Her real world problems pale when compared to a dead child whose desires are unknown. Of course all the supernatural goings-on are metaphors for her struggles and the longing never to be left alone. That doesn’t make them less scary or, in the world of the movie, any less real.
Once the horror aspect is in full bloom, the movie really clicks. The pace triples, and the tension goes through the roof. Things are seriously wrong in the dilapidated apartment complex and the viewer can feel is as well as Yoshimi. It all builds to a rewarding climax that should have more sensitive movie-goers hiding behind loved-ones. Nakata ups the emotional ante with an epilogue which is satisfying, and creepy.
Still, I would have liked Nakata to have offered a few fresher ideas. The shadow of Ringu is ever-present. Once again it is a separated mother who fears for her child, dealing with the ghost of a young girl (with black, stringy hair), and again there is the twist ending. And in each area of comparison, Dark Water comes out lacking: the frights are slighter, the mystery is obvious from the beginning, the twist is less dramatic and terrifying, and the mother-child relationship isn’t as engaging. Even without looking at its predecessor, Dark Water doesn’t shine. Nakata is trying so hard to make his points about the state of women in society and abandonment, that he hammers over and over on what was clear in the first few minutes. For a half hour, it feels like an episode of a made-for-TV series on the Women’s Cable Network.
The ending makes the journey worthwhile, but it is a more arduous and repetitive journey than it should have been. Dark Water is a solid entry in the J-Horror movement, but it is a movement which is dying from a lack of new concepts, and being better than the average member of the herd of Ringu rip-offs isn’t saying much.
It was remade in the U.S. in 2005 as Dark Water. Nakata directed The Ring Two (2005), the sequel to The Ring (2001), which was the English language remake of Ringu.