re:mote voices

Title: Dark Water
Cast: Hitomi Kuroki, Rio Kanno, Mirei Oguchi, Asami Mizukawa, Fumiyo Kohinata, Yu Tokui, Isao Yatsu, Shigemitsu Ogi
Director: Hideo Nakata

A woman and her daughter move into a decrepit apartment building. She is involved in a divorce, which includes a custody battle for the girl. At the same time she finds herself having to work for the first time since her daughter was born. Which puts her under enough stress without the expanding damp patch on the ceiling, something that comes from the seemingly abandoned flat upstairs.

As a child she was neglected by her own mother and is keen hat her own daughter has a better upbringing. But is concerned that history is repeating itself. As the film goes on, it becomes clear that girl about the same age as the daughter has gone missing. A girl that went to the same nursery school and lived in the flat upstairs. This is mixed with manifestations and hauntings – the kind of thing that has become a standard of the genre since the success of The Ring.

For me The Ring was hit and miss, partly because of the hype and the fact that the things people kept saying were scary really didn’t bother me too much. For me Dark Water is the most successful film I have seen from Hideo to date. The metaphor of the missing girl, and the associated fear and horror, for mother’s fear of losing or letting down her own daughter is striking – providing a different kind of theme from the more usual moral play. also based on a novel by Kenji Suzuki like the first Ring film, and like The Ring an American version is in the pipeline and due for release this year.