Dark Water

From the writing-directing team responsible for the original Ringu and Ringu 2 comes this Japanese psychological thriller (recently remade by Hollywood, and featuring Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly). Like similar ghost stories that have been pouring in from across the Pacific for the past half-decade or so, Dark Water is long on mood but short on plot, revolving around a nervous young mother in the throes of a difficult divorce, who moves with her kindergarten-aged daughter into a rundown Tokyo apartment building, where spooky things start happening--a child's book bag keeps mysteriously reappearing, water drips from the ceiling, and a tiny spectral figure flits about (accompanied by ominous music) just at the edge of the mother's vision. Is all of this just the result of the troubled woman's feverish imagination, or could it have something to do with the fact that a little girl disappeared from the apartment above theirs not long ago? Director Hideo Nakata overdoes the water motif (which he also used in the English remake of The Ring Two, his American debut earlier this year), but Dark Water succeeds in generating an atmosphere of vague dread that is distinctly unnerving--which is just what the filmmakers had in mind. Recommended. (F. Swietek)[Blu-ray/DVD Combo Review—Nov. 1, 2016—Arrow, 101 min., PG-13, $34.95—Making its first appearance on Blu-ray, 2002's Dark Water features a nice transfer and DTS-HD 5.1 audio on the Blu-ray disc. Extras include the behind-the-scenes featurettes “Hideo Nakata: Ghost, Rings and Water” on the director (26 min.), “Koji Suzuki: Family Terrors” on the author (21 min.), and “Junichiro Hayashi: Visualizing Horror” with the cinematographer (20 min.), as well as a “making-of” featurette (16 min.), interviews with costars Hitomi Kuroki (8 min.) and Asami Mizukawa (5 min.) and composer Shikao Suga (3 min.), and TV spots and trailers. Bottom line: this original Japanese horror film—which inspired a tepid Hollywood remake—shines on Blu-ray.]