If I went into a store to buy a can of Mountain Dew, but when I opened the thing it turned out to contain Dr. Pepper, I'd be angry. I would never buy Dr. Pepper. If the can says "Mountain Dew" it had better damn well contain Mountain Dew. Similarly, when a studio markets a movie as being in the horror genre, I expect horror. What I got was a snail paced Lifetime movie of the week. I'm surprised that Meredith Baxter-Birney didn't play the mom in this movie.
Seriously, nothing scary or interesting happens in this movie for the first hour and fifteen minutes. NOTHING. A single mother with emotional problems moves into a crappy apartment with her daughter. Her ex-husband is a dick, she can't get over her past, and her daughter starts talking to an imaginary friend. Oh, and there's a leak in the ceiling of her apartment. It leaks water. Brown water. Super scary DARK WATER. Oh wait, it's not scary at all. It's just annoying and wet. Actually, it looks like Dr. Pepper. The mother tries to get the apartment maintenance man to fix it, but he refuses. She calls the guy's boss, and he tells her to tell him to fix it. She tells him. He tells her no. She calls the boss back and tells him that he told her he wouldn't fix it. He tells her that he'll call him himself and tell him to fix it. Meanwhile, her ex-husband is threatening to sue her for full custody of their annoying daughter. Her apartment still leaks. She still hasn't gotten over her unhappy childhood. And now she may lose her own child! Are we bored yet? Yes. Are we scared? No.
Dark Water is yet another PG-13 Hollywood remake of a Japanese "horror" movie. What this means is that the movie has little to no gore or nudity, so it has to rely on nothing but atmosphere. A woman walks into a room. There's nothing scary about the room, and nothing scary happens. But the movie lets us know we're supposed to be scared because some spooky music starts playing. The leak in the ceiling is not scary, but the movie let's us know it's supposed to be REALLY scary because not only do we get the spooky music, we also get close-ups of the spot where the water leaks. If I wanted ONLY atmosphere, I'd watch the Weather Channel.
After what seems to be an eternity, we finally find out that the woman's daughter's imaginary friend is bad. We know she's bad because spooky music starts playing whenever the little girl talks to her. It turns out that her friend is really the ghost of another little girl who died in the apartment building. Oh, did I mention that the apartment building has a big water tank on the roof? Hmmmmm, the movie is called Dark Water, there's a tank of water on the roof. Hey, is that spooky music I just heard? Yes, the body of the dead girl is found in the tank of water. Someone learned the truth behind her death, and now her spirit can finally rest. And if you didn't see that coming at least a half an hour before it happened, you must be 5 years old and have never seen a ghost movie before.
The last 10 minutes of this movie are actually quite good, but they weren't worth the first 95 minutes. Just when you think all is well, the little girl's ghost actually materializes in the flesh and tries to kill the woman's daughter. It's the only scene in the movie that's anything close to horror. To save her daughter, the woman agrees to stay with the ghost. But, in order to do that, she has to become a ghost herself, and she dies! I enjoy it when a movie kills off it's main character, and I thought it was a satisfactory twist. (Although if they'd killed her in the FIRST 5 minutes instead of the last, I could have saved myself 105 minutes to stare at a blank wall).
The movie was well acted, and the sets and color scheme provided plenty of that oh so important atmosphere. But at the end of the day, this movie is a clichéd, soporific, estrogen laden drama wrapped up in a horror coating. If that's what you're looking for, you'll love it. Real horror fans need not apply.
Oh, I almost forgot. Tim Roth pops up in this movie. That made me think about Reservoir Dogs. That was the best part of this movie.
0 out of 2 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Tell Your Friends