Dark Water
*** Cert 15
Steve Rose
Friday July 22, 2005
The Guardian
Walter Salles' previous films, such as The Motorcycle Diaries and Central Station, hardly marked him out as a master of suspense, so it should be no surprise that this is an accomplished but not particularly scary remake of Hideo Nakata's Japanese apartment horror.
Now located in rainy Roosevelt Island, New York, the scary apartment in question is part of a hulking estate "in the brutalist style" as smarmy agent John C Reilly puts it to Jennifer Connelly. Since Connelly is in the middle of a custody battle, and in desperate need of a base for herself and her daughter, she moves in anyway. And sure enough, spooky things start to happen: a damp patch on the ceiling grows and grows, human hair comes out of the tap, her daughter starts talking of an imaginary friend.
It's not clear if Connelly needs an exorcist, a shrink, or just a decent plumber, and Salles keeps us guessing as long as possible - too long, as it turns out. It's as if he decided a straightforward horror movie was beneath him, but while he's busy skulking around the corridors and shooting Connelly's distraught features through every wet pane of glass he can find, the tension disappears down the plughole. When he does attempt some good old-fashioned horror flourishes towards the end, he only underlines what a good job Nakata did with the Japanese original.
