Newspaper correspondent Kyoko Togakure (Haruka Igawa) visits a nursing home in the outskirts of Tokyo. She finds the dead body of a resident. It was an apparent suicide. He's holding a piece of paper with the mystifying word "Death Water" written on it. Nearby are blood-stained scissors, and his eyes are squashed. She has no idea that this death is just the beginning of a horrendous nightmare.
No, not Dark Water, Death Water or Mizuchi in Japanese which is a film that has a slight Ringu-ish feel to it, but this time around we're not dealing with a cursed video tape, but instead cursed water. While it may sound like it, the film is not a rip-off or anything like it, and even though it may have similarities with other J-Horrors it's not a bad film, on the contrary, I actually found Death Water to be surprisingly good. Sure, it wouldn't have hurt if it would've been scarier than it was, but from a horror point of view, it had some of these horrific scenes that were pretty awesome. One of many other things that makes Death Water work in a good way is the very pacing of the film; it didn't take ages for it to begin delivering suspense and it had a cool story where little by little the mystery was uncovered, which made for something to happen for most of its running time.
In Death Water we get to follow Kyoko Togakure who's a very likable character. She's not some super detective, but on the other hand, she's not the least bit dumb either. The fact is that she's very easy to watch and to releate to, and she does a helluva lot for the film, delivering a very good performance and being the kind of person that is easy to root for. When she visits a nursing home in the outskirts of Tokyo, she finds a dead body along with a paper note that reads "Death Water". She of course wonders what it means and later asks a professor who tells her some myths about some fountain that's supposably connected to the netherworld. It doesn't take long before the professor commit suicide and Kyoko finds his notebook where he has written "Water for the dead, don't drink it", over and over throughout all the pages in the book. As other people become thirsty and suicidal, Kyoko tries to uncover the mystery with what she think is cursed water.
 
It was actually quite long ago since I saw a J-Horror film that really did deliver some decent horror, and I'm more than happy to say that Death Water sure did. Don't expect scares that'll send you to hell and back, but if you wanna see some cool horror, told from an all right story that has a great pace to it, you could definitely do worse than this. Most of the characters are pretty likable, with Kyoko being on the top of that list, but there are other interesting characters as well that adds to the whole feel of the film. It's also very hard watching Japanese horror these days without comparing new flicks to some older ones, and while Death Water may have things in common with other films, I would still say that it's well worth a look. If for nothing else, the actual horror scenes it delivers are very good.
Death Water was Kiyoshi Yamamoto's directional debut and with this being his first film and all, I must say that he does one helluva job and might be a name to look out for in the future. He co-wrote the script with Hirofumi Tanaka who's also a first-timer, but that only makes things more cool since they sure show that at least they know what they're doing and that's always appreciated. God knows we see way too many films where the filmmakers seem to have no idea of what they've gotten themselves into. In the end, Death Water may not be a great or for that matter a very original film, but at least it provides some pretty darn good horror entertainment so all of you J-Horror freaks out there, this is most likely something for you to check out.
Good acting, good story, great pacing, fine horror equals a good time. While Death Water may not be the scariest or most original Japanese horror film to date, it sure still has a lot to offer. Recommended.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Mizuchi
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Kiyoshi Yamamoto
WRITING CREDITS: Hirofumi Tanaka, Kiyoshi Yamamoto
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Haruka Igawa, Mio Suzuki, Atsuro Watabe
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 101 min
RATING: 8/10
Death Water Website/IMDB Click here
Death Water Trailer Click here
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