Dark Water

When was the last time we saw a really good horror film? A film that we actually found frightening, or failing that, sufficiently unnerving? But was also a good movie on its own? Hideo Nakata's follow-up to the first two Ringu films, Dark Water is just that - a damn good movie, really good horror movie, and actually manages some real frights.

I read in an interview with director Nakata that he actually finds most horror movies silly and is not a particular fan of the genre. Kind of an ironic statement, since he has more or less single-handed resurrected the kaidan film (Japanese ghost stories) with Ringu. Dark Water returns Nakata to another book by Kôji Suzuki (dubbed the 'Japanese Stephen King' since he single-handed resurrected the kaidan novel with his 1989 novel, Ringu). In this interview with Nakata, the director noted that he prefers human melodramas to supernatural thrillers, and when he makes films like Dark Water, he tries to focus in on the human story, keeping the supernatural to the periphery. Assuming this interview to be correct, Nakata's technique has paid off, big time!

Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) in involved in a bitter and vicious battle with her estranged husband Kunio (Fumiyo Kohinata) over custody of their 6 year-old daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno). Yoshimi and Ikuko move into a dilapidated block of flats, largely because this is the best the working mother can afford. The whole building seems to be leaking - water is pooling everywhere in the building and neither the estate agents nor the custodial staff really seem to care. As mother and daughter begin to settle into their new flat, a child's book bag keeps popping up in strange places (I never thought 'Hello Kitty' could be so disturbing!), before ghostly images of another young girl appears, particularly to Ikuko. The ghost, Mitsuko (Mirei Oguchi), was a young girl who accidentally drowned in the building's water tank, as she was playing by herself unsupervised by her negligent mother.

One of the things I really loved about this film is that Mitsuko behaves like the folklore about ghost children are supposed to: Mitsuko is not 'evil', a demon child just trying to destroy Yoshimi and Ikuko; she's selfish. She wants to get rid of Ikuko so she can claim Yoshimi as her own absent mother. I'm kind of curious about Suzuki's novel on this front: the whole urban legend dimension to Ringu was Nakata's contribution and doesn't appear in Suzuki's novel. I'm wondering whether likewise this aspect of Mitsuko comes from the director, not the original novel. I'll have to wait until the translation comes out, I guess.

Also, like all good kaidan films, the ghost is equally a 'vengeance spirit'. So the film could equally be seen as Mitsuko going after Yoshimi in punishment for her (economically necessary) neglect of Ikuko. But, as Nakata noted in that interview, by focusing on the human story of Yoshimi and Ikuko, and marginalizing Mitsuko as more of an antagonist than protagonist - that she is the force which sets the events of the film in motion, not the focus of the events themselves - keeps the film focused on the relationship between mother and daughter. And this human focus for a ghost story makes for damn fine and effective horror cinema.

Dark Water is on the Tartan Asia Extreme label, and typical of anything from Tartan, this is a pristine print, anamorphic widescreen (1.77:1), with clear and easy to read subtitles. There are not much extras to discuss, really just the very basics, but with a film this good, having an excellent print is what is most important. The hairs on the back of my neck still quiver when I think of one sequence in particular. Just wait for the sequence in the elevator: you can almost read the horrific thought forming behind Hitomi Kuroki's eyes! Brrrr!

While I really love a good ghost story (they seem to be the only sub-genre of horror film to actually have the potential to frighten me), I was thinking about what some of the other, not just really good, but still frightening ghost films were - movies where, no matter how many times we see them, they still chill us. So I thought I would end this review by putting Dark Water in my own personal canon of Scary Ghost Movies: Dead of Night (1945, Calvalcanti, Crichton, Hamer, Dearden), The Haunting (1964, Robert Wise), The Innocents (1961, Jack Clayton), Ringu (1998, Hideo Nataka) (obviously)… anyone think of any others? Send your answers on a postcard ….

Review by Mikel J. Koven