Walter Salles’ Dark
Water is a gripping exercise in horror
that opts for subtlety over bombast as it delivers legitimately creepy
entertainment and, more surprisingly, a genuinely moving love story.
Jennifer Connelly portrays Dahlia Williams, a
beleaguered woman who’s forced to move into a rundown apartment on
Roosevelt Island, a stone’s throw from Manhattan. This does not sit
well with her estranged husband (Dougray Scott), who puts her through the
wringer in a custody battle for their daughter, Ceci (Ariel Gade). That
stress helps trigger Dahlia’s memories of abuse that she has long
repressed. Compounding her anxiety are strange incidents: a growing leak in
the ceiling of her bedroom, the sound of footsteps in the abandoned
upstairs apartment, and her discovery of cascades of dark water in this
unit.
Salles does a masterful job of slowly building
tension as the film becomes progressively darker and the shots of the
characters tighter. Equally effective is how the building and surrounding
structures come to resemble both a maze and a prison, reflecting
Dahlia’s deteriorating state of mind.
Connelly is very good here, giving a complete
performance as a woman who is losing her grip on reality. Although her
scenes of despair are convincing, the moments she shares with Gade are
genuine and touching, and they prove essential in delivering the
film’s moving climax. The young actress gives an unaffected
performance that wonderfully completes the illusion that we are seeing a
real mother and daughter interact, and a supporting turn from John C.
Reilly as the landlord of the complex is a darkly comic performance that
should be remembered at Oscar time.
Dark Water is a remake of
Japanese director Hideo Nakata’s Honogurai
mizu no soko kara (2002). Nakata’s Ringu, released in 1998, was
Americanized as The Ring in 2002.
This article appears in Jul 7-13, 2005.
