The phrase �there�s something in the water� has never been so appropriate. After changing the way we look at the TV with the superb chiller Ring, the acclaimed team of writer Koji Suzuki and director Hideo Nakata re-emerge with a winning story of urban unease and the pressures and responsibilities of modern Japanese life and parenthood. For viewers of Ring and it�s sequel there is much to recognise here (tragic, mysterious, faceless characters, parental responsibility) but to view Dark Water as part of a formula would be to miss the point. Here is a film that immediately emotionally involves the audience, and from the start wades deep into and becomes fully immersed in tragic gloom.
Briefly, and to avoid spoilers, the story centres on unemployed, soon-to-be-divorcee Yoshimi Matsubaru and her young daughter Ikuko, of whom she is nervously fighting for custody with her husband. They set out to find a new place to live and settle for a small flat within an old, dark, inner-city block, stiflingly humid and riddled with damp, poor plumbing and creaky lifts. As the film progresses, her sad past and questionable metal state is revealed - mirrored in the strange behaviour of young Ikuko - as she becomes obsessed by the mysterious year-long disappearance of a young schoolgirl. Before too long, the suspicious sounds from the apartment above and the spreading damp on the ceilings impinge upon proceedings and the action builds.
The ambience of the film is fantastically powerful; all the elements are there. The cinematography is strikingly wonderful, full of suspenseful tracking shots and memorable images.
The majority of the film takes place against a backdrop of beautifully dark, rain-soaked urban settings, saturated with murky grey and blue hues. The soundtrack is amazing too, eerie soundscapes build to heart-racing crescendos, and effects interject at unexpected moments, imbuing the seemingly normal with dark, chilling undertones. Small elements of the plot are revealed slowly but forcibly, making the audience weave together small details to create the larger tapestry. Whilst in Ring, a driving, plot-heavy start gave way to a knuckle-clenching climax of horror, Dark Water revels in confounding expectations, in fact the climax you are waiting for never appears but always feels like it�s just around the corner; it�s the slow-building, near-relentless tension that provides the chill and proves that it is the expectation of the extraordinary which renders the ordinary truly compelling.
What becomes clear from all this is that Nakata has created a post-horror classic, in many ways transcending the horror genre, as if an unsettling delivery somehow reinforces the underlying message�and there is an underlying message here, made clearer by the final line of the film, which unfortunately, to make sense, is preceded by a baffling and somewhat implausible five minutes. To dwell on this however would be to taint what is essentially a marvellous film. Assured, masterful, sad, tense, unsettling, and utterly compelling. |
