Larger text
Smaller text
Print
E-mail
'Dark Water' relies on atmosphere
Jennifer Connelly
Rafy/Touchstone Pictures
Director: Walter Salles
Stars: Jennifer Connelly, Pete Postlethwaite, John C. Reilly
MPAA rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material, frightening sequences, disturbing images and brief language.
An hour or so into "Dark Water," as the already thick atmosphere congealed from sheer repetition, I began to suspect that we'd been led into a circular maze from which we would not escape rewardingly.
It's too much like a good campfire ghost story that, when protracted unduly, its stretch marks become giveaways that it's going nowhere particularly satisfying.
Atmosphere, then, is all. But is it sufficient? My guess is that most people are going to be good 'n' hooked for most of the running time, only to feel let down at the we-have-to-wrap-this-up-somehow finish.
"Dark Water" is based on a Koji Suzuki novel that was made into a 2002 Japanese movie by Hideo Nakata ("The Ring," "The Ring 2"). Rafael Yglesias wrote the American adaptation.
In the 1974 prelude set in rainy Seattle, little Dahlia is neglected by her unstable mom.
In the perpetually gloomy New York City of today, Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) and ex-husband Kyle (Dougray Scott) squabble icily before mediators over their daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade) and the reduced living conditions imposed on them by their divorce.
He's resettling in Jersey City, the sound of which is designed to make us quietly recoil. "Not Jersey City, Kyle!"
The movie's emphasis, though, is on Dahlia and Ceci, who back timidly into a ninth floor fixer-upper apartment on Manhattan's neighboring Roosevelt Island, whose dreariness is one bat shy of Dracula's Transylvania.
The landlord Mr. Murray (John C. Reilly) is eerily authentic in his duplicity. Veeck (Pete Postlethwaite), the building super, is in equal measures evasive and useless. Both characters are neatly conceived and deceptively well acted.
Brazilian director Walter Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries," the richly humane "Central Station") does a terrific job of exploring the eerie production design of Therese DePrez, which is a calculated shambles.
Everything leaks, including the elevator, which regularly fails to acknowledge the ninth floor. Inky black water blasts from anarchic faucets; seemingly synchronized commodes overflow. The apartment directly above is out of a renter's bad dream.
Make what you will of the dishonest attorney Jeff Platzer (Tim Roth). At least Ceci's teacher (Camryn Manheim) seems stable.
One may defend "Dark Water" as a well-calculated psychological thriller or decry it for being so overloaded with lies, nightmares and dubious mental stability that the audience is deprived of a rational refuge.
I wouldn't have skipped it. I'm too enthusiastic about the genre. But I'll be surprised if most folks don't share the sense of letdown.
