Too much of everything

One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely Brilliant!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Hideo Nakata must have a fascination with girls and dirty water. He took the world by storm with 'Ring' which involved a creepy girl in a well, and now this. A single mother and her daughter move into a new apartment in order to try and win sole custody of her child. However, she starts experiencing unexplainable sounds and startling visions which questions her mental well-being. An interesting combination, and one that works effectively. Merging supernatural tension with a family's emotional struggle, the symbolism and metaphorical analogies of divorce is apparent. How it can destroy not just the people around you, but also belongings and ownership of possessions. One may consider the ghostly entity to be a reminder of the emotional distress you can go through during a divorce. Other perspectives may just include the fact that she moved into a dilapidated complex where her ceiling is leaking. That's right, two valuable lessons here. Firstly, if your ceiling is leaking...abandon your home and save yourselves. Secondly, if you are running late to pick up your child from school...God damn tell someone! Nonetheless, Nakata directed another chilling horror with many effective camera placements where ghostly imagery can be seen in the distance. Hitomi Kuroki beautifully acted the innocent mother, she held the film together. Really emotional scene towards the end where mother and daughter are separated by an elevator, I felt the feels. Whilst it is a horror, it's not particularly scary. It's more focussed on the family drama. The ghost's motives were extremely ambiguous. At certain points she becomes aggressive and malicious, but her unfortunate demise was her own doing. I'm not entirely convinced that she needed to be the antagonist, particularly during the third act. I can see why, it just felt rushed and spontaneous. Also the last ten minutes could've been cut to make a tighter film. Yet again, another good Japanese horror where the American remake pales in comparison.

A truly memorable film, which succeeds not so much as a literal ghost story as an aching depiction of struggle, heartache, loneliness and loss.In some respects, the film might come across as pretty formulaic stuff, with generally predictable scares, a sometimes dubious script, and generic horror-film score (although there are also effective uses of background silence). Having said this, though, I should also add that the climax in the lift is genuinely shocking and heartrending. But what matters even more than the supernatural thrills is the all-too human story of the characters, the bleak atmosphere created, and the haunting imagery. All these elements the film pulls off remarkably well.The acting is pretty good. Admittedly, at first the mother appeared rather too high-strung to me, but that really is the kind of character she's meant to be. And the mother-child team is superb - there's real chemistry between the two.Dark Water is a notable accomplishment. It does often look like a formulaic supernatural thriller yet it transcends tired old clichés and conventions to be so much more; it manages to be consummately chilling, desolate, and poignant, all at the same time. As a work of art, and in terms of provoking genuine emotion, it succeeds (at any rate I found myself crying openly at the end, and I can honestly say I don't usually cry at films). Dark Water is arguably the best of the whole raft of Asian-horror films of the past two decades. At its core, it is a subtle, moving, and highly intelligent film, the like of which I've rarely seen, whether in the supernaturalist genre or out of it. A treat..

A divorced mother wins custody of her young daughter after a bitter court battle. Together they move into a rundown apartment complex where the apartment is dirt cheap but soon after moving in, they begin to find the unit plagued by water damage. Not just that, but a red child's bag begins to appear in strange places, even after being disposed of. The mother, who is beginning to fear for her sanity after her tough childhood, discovers that the bag belonged to & is the sign of a young girl who has lived in the apartment above them & who disappeared several years ago.Ever since he hit paydirt with RING, director Hideo Nakata has gone on to make several films in both his native Japan & in Hollywood. For years, fans had been waiting for him to return to the horror genre & make another classic, a wish that Nakata had proved too tempted to avoid.Unlike the majority of horror fans, I was one of the few that didn't think that Ring was any sort of classic. Sure it had a couple of great jump moments (particularly that scene with Sadako climbing out of the TV), but it was a hideously overrated supernatural mystery film that had a plot that was obtuse at times & never made any particular sense (not to mention an internal logic that was twisted like a pretzel). However, it did have some interest & the remake was considerably better.With Dark Water, Nakata tried to do another Ring, only with a red child's bag & a flood of water standing for a videotape. Most of Nakata's fans & even some critics who had mixed feelings about Ring were impressed with Dark Water but I wasn't one of them. To be honest, the plot belongs more in a drama film than a straight horror film. Not just that, but Nakata's skill as a filmmaker isn't entirely consistent – his style was crude with Ring, but when it came to making Ring 2, he had improved somewhat. Here, however, his skill deserted him. There are no jump shocks & Nakata's constant use of the red bag's ghostly appearances was a poor attempt at providing tension.When it came to the ending, Nakata does the same sort of foolish mistake that M. Night Shyamalan did for his films & throws in an end twist that makes no sense whatsoever. I'll explain the following – the girl fell into the water tower & drowned (something that went unnoticed by anyone else despite the girl living in the building & which was never investigated) & haunted the building ever since. Her apartment's kitchen taps were turned on & left on for at least six months, resulting in the apartment being flooded (how on Earth does an apartment become flooded without anyone noticing for six months? Doesn't make sense to me either), which resulted in the water damage to the heroine's apartment. Not just that, but the ghost's red bag keeps reappearing in places despite being dropped into the water originally by the girl herself. And how does the drinking water (which came from the water tower the girl fell into) become dirty without most of the people living there noticing it. I mean, hair shows up in some of the taps, for crying out aloud! But in the ending, the ghost forces the mother to abandon her daughter & join her in the afterlife for no reason. Really stupid if you ask me.Having said that, the day-to-day drama the mother & daughter living in the apartment go through is okay, although strictly routine. Not just that, the acting is reasonable & has some interest in it (Rio Kanno makes for one cute kid & who would make a good actress when she grows up). The epilogue that follows the mediocre ending compensates somewhat for the weakness of the rest of the film's story but doesn't elevate what is an otherwise unexceptional film.

Huge horror fan so if your looking for a horror aficionado's take on the movie then read this brief review Good Story, eeriness abounds, decent scares yet lacking the punch that I neededMore chilling than scary I guess. Read some review so I watched it. Not gonna lie kinda disappointed. Solid story but other horror movies deal with similar themes and are just handled better. very dreary. almost too much. weather is shite in every scene. maybe if the movie was more stylized i would have liked it. Some decent scares but I watched shutter from Thailand the day before and that blew this out of the water in terms of scares. maybe biased on scare factor because shutter was so recently watchedIdk i cant say its bad. its definitely a decent movie but not great.