Introduction

Is it just me, or do the Japanese have an irrational fear of damp little girls? Perhaps there’s some cultural nuance that I’m missing. Perhaps. Or it could just be that Hideo Nakata accidentally delivered the same movie twice. I seem to remember another movie he directed about a little girl that drown whose restless spirit haunts the living so that they will solve the mystery of her death.

A friend asked me to rent Dark Water, and it was my mistake that I picked up the original Japanese version. It wasn’t a problem for me since I’m a fan of Japanese horror anyway; but this friend of mine refused to watch with subtitles, so I was stuck watching the movie with English dubs. For those of you that have watched a movie in a different language, you know that dubbing pretty much ruins foreign films, especially horror. I tried to watch bearing that in mind, but even so you won’t hear me preaching any praises for Dark Water.

Plot Summary

Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water is the story of Yoshimi Matsubara, a woman in the middle of an unpleasant divorce and custody battle over her six year-old daughter, Ikuko. Yoshimi has won temporary custody of her daughter, but must find a permanant home and gainful employment to keep it. Yoshimi and her daughter rent an apartment in an older building in Tokyo. When they inspect the apartment the manager attributes the humidity and condensation in the apartment to the bad rain. However after they have settled in and the rain has long since passed, the moisture not only persists but gets worse, leaving watermarks on the ceiling of Ikuko’s bedroom.

Yoshimi begins to sense that something is wrong at her building when Ikuko discovers the backpack of a small child on the roof. They turn it in to the apartment manager who, quite curiously, remarks that no children have lived in the apartment complex for some time. Her suspicions are confirmed when, after the bag was disposed of several times, it keeps reappearing on the roof, in the trash, and even in her own daughter’s backpack.

The story begins to unravel when Yoshimi sees a missing child poster while picking up Ikuko from school. The child in the picture coincidentally is carrying a red bag just like the one from the roof. As Yoshimi puts the pieces together, the moisture in her apartment becomes worse and worse, until their paranormal roots are eventually revealed.

My Opinion

I enjoyed Dark Water. The plot was decent, and the movie delivered the psychological discomfort and terror that has carved J-Horror a niche market in America. However if you have already seen Ringu, don’t bother watching Dark Water. You’ve already seen it.