Dark Water (2002)

A fear of drowning

Hideo Nakata, the director who brought us Sadako of the Ring movie franchise, is back with another horror picture, Dark Water. His heroine in this outing is also a young girl with long hair. She has this thing about water. The place she lives in is leaky and you can feel her presence whenever water starts dropping from the ceiling.

This girl, however, is much more than just another spook. Her name is Mitusko Kawal, and she's often seen garbed in a yellow raincoat and holding a red bag. She inhabits an almost abandoned and dimly lighted apartment building. She has new neighbors though, a young woman named Yoshimi Matsubara and her 5-year-old daughter Ikuko. Recently separated from her husband, Yoshimi is starting a new life. Yet both mother and dauther would learn that this new dwelling they've just moved into is the last place to find any happiness.

Ardent fans of the Ring series will probably know what to expect from Dark Water. Nakata has employed the same techniques that made Ring and its sequel, Ring 2, such huge successes - the eerie sounds, sudden and split-second glimpses of phantoms, flashbacks that trace the root of terror and objects that make Yoshimi instantly terrified (in the case of Dark Water, the red bad and the damp blotch in the ceiling of Yoshimi's apartment that grows larger each day).

Little Ikuko befriends the enigmatic Mitsuko and this strange friendship has put the former in a hazardous situation. It agitates Yoshimi, who is in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband (and Ikuko's father), Kunio. The working mother is out to prove to that she can raise her daughter on her own. At the same time, she tries to figure out Ikuko's sudden disappearances and the mystery behind the bag and the leakage.

You may expect Mitsuko to be another Sadako, eager to vent her ire on other people due to her sorry predicament. However, you'll be surprised to learn that Mitsuko is merely a lonely girl who craves for company and affection. At some point in the film, Yoshimi is confronted with the truth about Mitsuko and she commits a selfless act in the movie's climax.

Horror film buffs may be disappointed with this unexpected twist, but this variation isn't the least surprising. The Japanese filmmaker is neither reared up in the Hollywood formula, which contents itself with gimmicky shocks and screams, nor in Easter European Cinema, which engages in slow-paced shots that allow time for viewers to analyze a single scene. He simply associated some of the film's elements with certain feelings that his characters have to go through, which is typical in Asian movies.

(First published in The Manila Times on July 30, 2003)