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DVD Dark Water
Dark Water is Japanese horror auteur Hideo Nakata's return to the genre after his Ring cycle made you too scared to watch television ever again. Where Ringu dealt with a supernatural force wreaking revenge via technology, this film is a much more traditional ghost story. After winning a custody battle for her daughter, single mother Yoshimi moves into what she thinks is the perfect apartment with her daughter Hitomi. No sooner have they unpacked than strange things begin to disturb their new life. A water leak from the supposedly abandoned apartment above gets bigger and bigger, a child's satchel reappears even though Yoshimi throws it away several times, and she is haunted by the image of a child wearing a yellow mackintosh who bears a striking resemblance to a young girl who disappeared several years before. The conventional narrative follows Yoshimi's increasingly desperate attempts to discover who or what force is haunting her daughter, but the story's execution is far from predictable. Nakata is the master of understated suspense: there's always a feeling of motiveless malignancy that runs like an undercurrent through his films--far more frightening than out and out shocks--and here he also practically drowns his audience in water imagery. The film is saturated; the relentless dripping in the apartment, the constant rain outside and the deliberately washed-out photography make any color, such as the yellow coat, seem incongruous and unsettling. Nakata also clears the film of unnecessary characters--this is an almost deserted Tokyo--preferring to concentrate the action on Yoshimi's rising hysteria as she struggles to understand what is happening and how to save her daughter. Granted, the special effects are somewhat unconvincing and the ending confused, but even so the result is a stylish and disquieting chiller that will do for bathtubs what his Ring films did for video recorders. --Kristen Bowditch
Dark Water poses an elemental question: How do we evaluate a society? Koji Suzuki's answer may be in the way we treat our children, and Director Hideo Nakata's haunting adaptation of child abandonment and parental sacrifice doesn't fail to deliver.
Dark Water begins with Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) in the throe of a bitter divorce, and embarking on a new life with her young daughter, Ikuku (Rio Kanno). Needing to relocate, they settle in a dank riverfront apartment in a desiccated Tokyo neighborhood, staffed by an opportunistic property manager and recalcitrant superintendent. Yoshimi's less than ideal new job, and Ikuko's trepidation about attending a new school add to their apprehension. Their struggle takes an unexpected turn when Yoshimi senses the ghostly presence of a young girl, wearing a yellow pauncho and grasping her red Mimiko school bag, which Ikuko later finds, but Yoshimi won't allow her to keep. Despite its disposal, the bag mysteriously reappears throughout the film, poignantly punctuating the plot. Yoshimi realizes the serious nature of the girl's presence, who manifests herself, at first, with a watermark on their apartment ceiling, looking much like Sadako's ring from Ringu, before worsening into an ungainly apparition with the passage of time. Yoshimi's new responsibilities keep her from picking-up Ikuko after school on time, on a few occasions, which fuels her estranged husband's drive to gain Ikuku's custody, haggaring an already frustrated Yoshimi.
But here is where the mystery deepens.
The waterworks are accompanied by footfalls from apartment 405, leading Yoshimi to investigate. She learns that a young girl, Mitsuko Kawai, lived in the apartment and was abandoned by her father, following a broken marriage. Moreover, Mitsuko may, in fact, be competing with lkuko for her affection. Emotionally torn, Yoshimi must try to protect her daughter from Mitsuko's pursuit. If this sounds familiar, do not misunderstand. Dark Water is a unique film, with its own story to tell, distinct but not disconnected from Suzuki's Ring series, and well worth viewing.
Children--particularly infants, young girls, the infirm, the frail and the elderly--are society's most vulnerable members. Two decades ago, novelist Morris West grappled with a similar theme (among others) in the Clowns of God (1981), which debated whether or not the mentally incapacitated had the right to survive a world catastrophe. (You'll need to read his novel, for yourself, to learn his answer.) In Dark Water, Hideo Nakata masterfully brings to life a young girl's ghostly search for love and acceptance that overpowers the living. Fine performances abound, underscoring Mitsuko's heart-wrenching tragedy and society's penance.
four stars as a psychodrama
Touted as a horror movie, the only way this could scare you is if you haven't seen any recent horror films. I would categorize this as a psychodrama at the very most.
Written by the same author as the ring- that I thought was great- I'm sure as a book it was a great idea and I've hear good things about the Japanese version of the movie, but this one falls flat. The characters are well played but that doesn't help the script. Unless you are mentally handicapped, you will figure out "who-done-it" within the first twenty minutes.
I would give this four stars as a psychodrama, just don't go into it expecting to get your pants scared off or you'll only end up falling asleep.
Nakata's direction superb
While I was expecting another creepy horror thriller from Hideo Nakata, in the vein of Ringu, he delivers something different here. Dark Water is more about the difficulty of the main character's situation as a struggling single mother, than it is your typical Asian ghost story.
After viewing countless American style horror films, I immediately took to the varied pacing and attention to atmosphere of Asian horror. With Dark Water, Nakata takes his time, deliberately pacing his story and developing the primary characters. While this is a ghost story, rather than merely setting up scenerios where the ghost scares the bejeezus out of two-dimensional dupes, Nakata seamlessly tells a tale of a mother pushed to the brink, going through a tough divorce, and having to find a home for herself and her daughter, not to mention a job to pay the bills. And as if that wasn't hard enough, she just happens to move in right below a ghost.
I like the idea that everything does not have to have tidy resolution in film. I enjoy the fact that I may have a few questions after the film is over. Is this story told from the mother's point of view? The daughter's perhaps? Is this a story about the strength/weakness of the bond between a mother and daughter, or just a creepy atmospheric ghost story? I think Dark Water is all this and more. I find myself going back over facets of this movie well after the fact.
Dark Water is a compelling story of a mother and daughter's struggle to survive and stay together under very strenuous circumstances. If you are looking for an upbeat, fast paced horror film, pass this one by. Dark Water requires patience through the first two acts, but pays off in the third, in a way which completely fits this thoughtful, moody tale.
Two young sisters recovering from an unnamed trauma must face a mysterious past in this excellent South Korean shocker. A worldwide hit upon its release and based on an old Korean fairy tale; two sisters (wonderfully played by Su-jeong Lim and Geun-yeong Mun) come to live with their cold and distant father and turn-on-a-dime stepmother in a house where nothing is as it seems. A wonderfully haunting score, starkly beautiful imagery, and a labyrinthine plot that twists and turns at every dark corner all set the stage for a riveting and often terrifying guessing game of a movie. Equal parts drama, mystery, and ghost story, A Tale of Two Sisters is a richly complex and challenging cinematic treat that may very well demand repeat viewings. --Matt WoldMore Info about this DVD Director(s): Ji-woon Kim DVD Release Date: Released the 29 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Following in the footsteps of The Ring cycle, the Ju-On series of horror films has taken Japan by the throat. According to this movie, the title refers to a curse placed upon a house where violence occurred. Sure enough, we see a string of unhappy encounters in a seemingly ordinary home, where ghosts have settled in the aftermath of murder. Director Takashi Shimizu (who also directed the Hollywood remake, The Grudge) constructs the picture out of separate fragments, not told in chronological order; the haunted house is the main character, not any one of the unsuspecting human characters. Cult mavens might suggest that Shimizu uses devices and images that have already worked well in films by Hideo Nakata and Kiyoshi Kurosawa--the Japanese horror film does have its... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Megumi Okina - Misaki Ito - Misa Uehara (II) Director(s): Takashi Shimizu DVD Release Date: Released the 09 November 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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It's not the scary hit that The Ring was in 2002, but The Grudge makes a similarly convincing case for American remakes of popular Japanese horror films. Barely a year passed between the release of Takashi Shimizu's creepy ghost story Ju-On: The Grudge and the production of this American remake, set in Tokyo and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in her first post-Buffy horror film. About the only significant difference between the two films is the importing of a mostly-American cast (including Bill Pullman, Clea DuVall and Grace Zabriskie), but The Grudge was reconfigured (by screenwriter Stephen Susco) to allow Shimizu to refine and improve the spookiest highlights of his earlier version, which enjoyed previous incarnations as a short film and two... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sarah Michelle Gellar - Jason Behr - Clea DuVall Director(s): Takashi Shimizu DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The storyline was rather bland and maybe it's just me, but the whole concept of people being scared when their phone is ringing has been highly played out. There was one part that made me jump, but other than that, there isn't anything too scary and/or gory. The child actress in this movie, was not very convincing. Everytime she was "going crazy", I couldn't help but laugh at the poor acting.
The DVD title screen for this movie is my favorite part. I kept thinking my own cell phone was interfering with the DVD player. haha. Anyhow, I wouldn't recommend this movie, unless you have nothing better to do. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Byeong-Ki Ahn DVD Release Date: Released the 25 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Brutal and breathtaking, Sin City is Robert Rodriguez's stunningly realized vision of Frank Miller's pulpy comic books. In the first of three separate but loosely related stories, Marv (Mickey Rourke in heavy makeup) tries to track down the killers of a woman who ended up dead in his bed. In the second story, Dwight's (Clive Owen) attempt to defend a woman from a brutal abuser goes horribly wrong, and threatens to destroy the uneasy truce among the police, the mob, and the women of Old Town. Finally, an aging cop on his last day on the job (Bruce Willis) rescues a young girl from a kidnapper, but is himself thrown in jail. Years later, he has a chance to save her again.
More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 16 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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