DARK WATER (PG-13)  **1/2

 

Directed by Walter Salles. 105 minutes.

Starring Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Pete Postlethwaite and Dougray Scott. Released by Touchstone Pictures.

 

Here is a disturbing and sad film about parental abandonment that is masquerading as a run of the litter ghost story that is most effective when it exploring the horrors of broken homes and least effective when creepy faces pop up in washing machines and elevators. The film is directed by Walter Salles, who made Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries, which was one of my favorite films of last year, and is based on the work of Hideo Nakata, whose work also inspired The Ring films.

 

If The Ring was the scariest American remake of a Japanese horror film in recent years and The Grudge is the worst, then Dark Water is the most mature. The film opens with a flashback to Seattle in the year 1974. A young girl, who will grow up to be Jennifer Connelly, is waiting for her tardy mother at school. The mother shows up and, in a matter of seconds, makes us want to murder her. We later find out the mother is a mean alcoholic and Dahlia’s (Connelly) father abandoned the two of them.

 

The film sets its story on Roosevelt Island of modern day New York. Dahlia and her daughter, Ceci (Ariel Gade), are apartment hunting in what has to be one of the more run down apartment complex areas of New York City. Dahlia is going through a nasty divorce with her husband, played by Dougray Scott, and the two of them can barely be civil to one another. Dahlia takes her daughter to the Island because apartments there are more in their price range. She is pleased to find out that the two of them will be just a few blocks from a good school.

 

The apartment they chose is, as Bette Davis would say, a dump. The landlord is pretty shifty and talks without stopping, in order to make potential buyers forget any questions they might have. He is played by John C. Reilly, an actor whose contribution to any film is a blessing. There is also a creepy, cranky superintendent who sits at the front desk, who is played by Pete Postlethwaite. Soon after the two move in, the ceiling starts to leak and Connelly inspects the apartment above her, where a Russian family recently lived. Soon, Dahlia and her daughter begin to hear weird noises in the night and the leak worsens.

 

The reason for the leak and creepy goings-on in the building are related to an abandoned girl, who once lived in the building. Dark Water is at its strongest when it ties Dahlia’s past with the past of the girl who haunts the apartment building. Better yet, hints of Dahlia’s declining mental state and potential transformation into a bad parent toward Ceci provide even stronger dramatic flare for the film. Unfortunately, Dark Water starts getting bogged down with too many scenes of, as I said, faces in washing machines, the creepy girl sneaking into Connelly’s bed and Ceci acting weird, as all children in movies like this one do.

 

That said, there is a lot to praise here. Connelly provides good work and rises to the challenge of making the audience question whether Dahlia has a few screws loose, but still allow us to like her at the same time. The cinematography and art direction here are nice as well. The locale is grungy and gritty and we really squirm at the thought of inhabiting it. Typically, in films, apartments that are called dumps would seem pretty nice to the average person. Not this one. I also really liked the friendship between Connelly and Tim Roth, who plays her lawyer – a really nice guy who is on hand to help at the placing of a call. Roth’s character also seems lonely and abandoned by someone. I wish the film had explored his character more.

 

I can only review the film I was given to see, not the one I wished I had seen. That being said, I sort of wish this film could have lightly hinted at the horror element of the story, rather than emphasizing it, especially to the point it does in the last twenty minutes. As a drama, Dark Water really pulled me into the story. Yet, as a horror film, it relied on old tricks and too familiar peek a boo jumps in the dark. The film’s ending is abrupt and unexpected, but it sort of ties nicely into the overall explored themes of the film. I mostly liked it because it is a horror film that, like most great horror films, is about more than what meets the eye. However, it is the horror element here that watered down Dark Water.