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Dark Water Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic material, frightening sequences, disturbing images and brief language) Theater release: July 08, 2005 by Touchstone Pictures Directed by: Walter Salles Runtime: 1 hour 45 minutes Cast: Jennifer Connelly (Dahlia Williams), Ariel Gade (Ceci Williams), Jennifer Baxter (Mary), John C. Reilly (Mr. Murray), Tim Roth (Platzer), Dougray Scott (Kyle), Pete Postlethwaite (Veeck) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

If you see Dark Water expecting a fright show, you may be disappointed. True, the film is a remake of a Japanese thriller directed by Hideo Nakata, and it is based on a novel by Koji Suzuki, both of whom were responsible for Ringu, the horror film that was remade in English as The Ring. And true, the film is about a ghost that haunts an apartment building and tends to express itself in dark puddles and splotchy stains on the ceiling. But the original film was more of a brooding psychological drama than a horror movie, per se, and the remake—directed by Brazilian auteur Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries) from a script by Rafael Yglesias (Fearless)—stays true to that vision.

Jennifer Connelly plays the role of Dahlia Williams

The film begins in Seattle over 30 years ago. Young Dahlia (Perla Haney-Jardine) is standing outside her school, waiting for her mother (Hal Hartley veteran Elina Löwensohn) to come pick her up, long after all the other children have gone home; and when her mother does arrive, you can tell that she resents her child and regards her as a burden, at best. The film then jumps ahead to present-day New York. The grown-up Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) is in the middle of a messy divorce from her husband Kyle (Dougray Scott), and she is looking for a place to live with their five-year-old daughter Cecilia (Ariel Gade), or "Ceci".

One of the cheaper buildings she checks out is an old and somewhat run-down apartment complex on Roosevelt Island that happens to be only two blocks away from one of the best schools in the city. Ceci doesn't like the dingy look of the place at first—when Dahlia optimistically compares the neighborhood's dense, claustrophobic architecture to a small town, Ceci demurs, "I like the big city better"—but by the end of their visit, Ceci suddenly can't wait to live there. Does she change her mind because of the rather unconvincing sales pitch given by the property manager (John C. Reilly)? Hardly. Instead, her attachment to the place seems to have something to do with a Hello Kitty bag she finds on the roof of the building, after she parts from her mother and checks out one of the stairwells.

Dahlia meets a creepy building superintendent, played by Pete Postlethwaite

We suspect right away that there is something more to Ceci's interest in the place than the bag—which is entrusted to the superintendent (Pete Postlethwaite), himself a seemingly shifty character, just in case someone claims it. By this point, Dahlia has already felt a ghostly hand reaching for her own in the elevator, though she shrugs it off; and the water stains everywhere, especially in the ceiling above Ceci's bed, seem more than accidental. Before long, Ceci is looking at the stain above her bed—or at the hole in the ceiling the superintendent leaves there during one of his half-hearted attempts to fix the leak—and talking to an "imaginary friend" who seems to be speaking to her from that space.

Naturally, all this strange behavior places an enormous amount of stress on Dahlia as she fights her ex-husband for custody of their daughter. But Dahlia, too, begins to see and hear strange things. A visit to the abandoned, flooded apartment upstairs brings back shocking memories of her own abusive mother; and Dahlia begins to sense that she and Ceci's "imaginary friend", whose name is Natasha, have something in common—an impression deepened by the fact that Natasha, like young Dahlia, is also played by Haney-Jardine.

Ariel Gade plays the part of Ceci

Unfortunately, the film is not as clear on this point as it could have been. The original film was more explicit in spelling out the role that parental neglect played in making Natasha the apparition that she now is, and it was more explicit in showing how this shared history of parental neglect creates a sort of connection between her and Dahlia, who comes to feel she can heal her own psychological wounds by helping this ghost to deal with hers. These points are still evident in the remake, but they are muted somewhat; it is as though Yglesias and Salles wanted to be more suggestive and evocative than the typical scary movie—and that is a worthwhile aim in its own right—but they pulled one too many punches. At the same time, they sensationalize things a bit more: Certain parents here are not merely neglectful, but abusive or even insane, presumably because the filmmakers felt it would take more than not being picked up from school on time to traumatize an American child.

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