Dark Water Honogurai mizu no soko kara (2002) Written by Kôji Suzuki creator of "The Ring" Directed by Hideo Nakata director of The Ring 2 and original director of Ringu Dark Water Overall Score: 10/10 Story Characters Directing Effects Music

Someone who understands completely the dread a small out-of-focus figure in the distance can inspire, Hideo Nakata is the master of Japanese scary movies. His latest, "Dark Water", immerses the viewer in Koji Suzuki's deceptively simple story of broken families, lost children and awful apartments. Our heroine and her tremendously cute daughter move in to the awful apartment, with lazy caretaker and eerie CCTV (a guaranteed spine-tingler in this genre). Strange things start happening pretty soon, such as water dripping through the ceiling, sightings of a mysterious child in a yellow raincoat, and the appearance, disappearance and reappearance of a totemic red bag, which fills the audience with dread every time we see it.

As the domestic drama unfolds, with divorce proceedings, custody battles and the quest for a job, the atmosphere of pure tension builds and builds until a great climactic scene which, in the screening I attended, caused a mass cry of "Oh, sh*t!" as we realised the implications of the little girl in the corridor crying "Mommy"... If that's her daughter, over there, then who's she got in the lift with her? And... relax. The film's real climax then unfolds, with a strange, lyrical meeting between grown-up daughter and ghost mother. This, you realise, was the point all along: a mother's love for her daughter, a lost child's need for a mother, a mother's sacrifice to save her child.

Japanese culture has always been about honoring your ancestors, and protecting those who have passed on, into their next life... this movie is both moving, and intensely scary, in design, composition, direction, and symbolism. This like Ring 0, left me awed, deeply saddened, and touched by the depth and breadth that ones go, for love.

 

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