Hitomi moves in to a crummy apartment in a shitty building with her little daughter. Shortly after moving in she sees huge water stains in the ceiling which is dripping down onto the floor and each day the stain gets bigger and bigger. She talks to the landlord and the building manager to help fix the problem but time goes by and nothing happens. Her daughter later finds a red bag which Hitomi gives to the building manager as it might belong to someone else, but later on her daughter comes with the bag again and even though Hitomi throws it away it re-appears. She finds out that the bag belonged to a girl that appears missing and more and more strange things start to happen that in the end ties everything together.
After the first viewing of Ringu by the same director, Hideo Nakata, I wasn't sure if I could actually take another movie like that as Ringu scared the living crap out of me. But having it in my hand I kinda had to watch it and it ended up being not half as scary as Ringu of course (nothing could be) but still scary enough and it was a very good movie to watch.
Too bad they also made a shitty remake of it, but back to the original one, it has a interesting story and will make you jump out of your seat a few times, that is if you get into the story and if you're not too dumb to realise when it's scary like some people have proven to be.
 
You must be somewhat impressed by the director to first pull off a movie like Ringu, and then something like this. It uses these special camera angles like in Ringu/The Eye to improve the eeire atmosphere, and it works so well, too well one could say as it gets really creepy at times.
In the beginning it might feel a little bit slow-paced, but once it takes off, it stays that way until the very end.
Dark Water have some really good scares, and the overall creepy atmosphere in the building it takes place in adds a genuine horror feel to it. I would recommend, for the best effect, and to get most out of Dark Water, to watch it alone at night.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Honogurai mizu no soko kara
MOVIE YEAR: 2002
DIRECTOR: Hideo Nakata
WRITING CREDITS: Kôji Suzuki, Hideo Nakata
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Hitomi Kuroki, Rio Kanno, Mirei Oguchi
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 101 min
RATING: 8/10
Dark Water Website/IMDB Click here
Dark Water Trailer Click here
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