Dark Water (2005)

Originally Written

Saturday, January 7, 2006

From the author of The Ring (one of my all-time favorite horror films) comes Dark Water a story about Dahlia Williams and her daughter Ceci who move into a dilapidated apartment complex that resembles a Nazi prison camp barrack. Dahlia is currently very stressed as she's going through a divorce and custody battle with her husband. On top of that she has continual migraines and nightmares of the day her mother abandoned her. Now to make matters worse they're living in an apartment with a constant leak in the ceiling.

No one in the complex cares to help fix the leak, so Dahlia goes to the apartment above hers to discover the room is completely flooded. The maintenance guy claims it’s a bunch of kids fooling around and causing trouble. Prior to that a Russian family used to live there but they skipped out and will probably never return. The whole situation gets worse when Ceci begins to have an "imaginary" friend named Natasha, who is all too real, she's the little girl from the apartment above who was left by her parents and now wants Dahlia to be her mother!

Dark Water was a huge disappointment, the acting was surprisingly good for a horror film mainly due to the talent of Jennifer Connelly, but that could not save this movie from the awful story and extremely slow pace. The glaring issue is nothing ever happens, and for a horror film there should be something strange going on other than a leaky ceiling. So many times this film leads you to believe something was going jump out or attempt to startle you but nothing ever did. The story was really made in an attempt gain some success off The Ring, there's no original ideas here with the water scenes, the death of the ghost, and the mother aspect, all ripoffs of The Ring.

Another aspect that ruined the film is nothing is believable. It rains the whole movie, and this film goes over a number of days maybe even weeks, this isn't Seattle this is New York! Next there's only two to three people ever shown living in the entire apartment building! Throughout the film we see one guy and a couple of skater boys, nobody else. Finally the idea of the room above being full of water was a joke. When Dahlia opens to door to the apartment water should be gushing out the door, but it never moves past. The entire story is absurd and these horror films about bratty little ghosts who come and torment people because they want a mommy gets old fast. The ironic thing is the girl died of her own stupidity she had no reason to come back and haunt people, and her parents leaving her was more or less a stupid mistake on their part nothing hateful. In the end I found Dark Water boring, predictable, repetitive and a bad knock off of The Ring. But what annoyed me the most is how the film toys with you acting as if something is going to happen, some sort of twist or deeper plot, but nothing you're only being "punked", this is nothing but a boring horror film about a leaky ceiling!

3/10