It’s a classy production and no mistake. Beautifully crafted from Hideo Nakata’s spectacularly spooky J-horror, this Hollywood remake just screams quality. An elegant source film, the delicate Oscar-winning actress in the central role, a supporting cast comprised of thoroughly reputable character types, and in director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries,Central Station) a director with a conjurer’s eye – the capacity to see something lush and pretty in nothing at all. Sure enough, rising damp has rarely seemed as alluring as it does in Dark Water.
Like the original Nakata film, this is a spiritual rather than visceral arrangement, knotting together disquieting themes of familial discord, urban isolation, maternal guilt and supernaturalism. In the wake of a pernickety bitter divorce, Jennifer Connelly’s frail melancholic heroine finds affordable accommodation for herself and her young daughter on Lincoln Island.
While the inherent trippiness of Japanese horror is often diminished by geographical displacement, Lincoln’s strange, blurry abject space just outside New York City is a decent substitute for the alien Japanese dreamscape. Supervised by a vaguely sinister Pete Posthlewaite and a complacent landlord (Reilly), the beige and green apartment is already quite oppressive when the little girl begins singing 'Incey Wincey Spider' to her imaginary friend in the damp patch on the ceiling. As any seasoned horror fan can tell you, children’s nursery rhyme equals depreciating real estate. While every frame aches with eerie gorgeous sadness, there’s something a little too restrained about Salles’ handsome drama. The uneasy broiling atmospherics are ultimately too tasteful, too guileful for Dark Water’s own good. It’s all foreplay and no action. Don’t get me wrong, it’s ever so creepy, but like its ghostly fragile leading lady, it’s not really robust enough to scare anyone who doesn’t live in morbid fear of plumbing disasters.