Japanese director Hideo Nakata (THE RING, JU-ON) adapts another story by RING novelist Koji Suzuki for a supremely creepy tale of atmospheric horror. Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki) is a soon-to-be single mother going through a rather nasty divorce and struggling for custody of her adorable five-year-old daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno). Forced to find a new job and home, Yoshimi settles for a drab concrete highrise with long, unpopulated corridors and damp, shadowy interiors that include a patch of murky water dripping through the ceiling from the apartment above. As the building`s mildewy recesses take their psychological toll on Yoshimi, Ikuko keeps stumbling upon a small, red child`s handbag that belonged to a little girl named Mitsuko (Mirei Oguchi), who lived in the upstairs apartment and disappeared under mysterious circumstances--and seems to be exerting her ghastly influence over the mother-daughter pair in increasingly menacing ways. Sustaining an aura of dread that would make Roman Polanski proud, DARK WATER mines metaphor-rich water images of gurgling bathtubs and ominous rooftop water towers for a thrilling horror odyssey that also works as a social commentary on the dynamics of motherhood, madness, and the modern nuclear family (ala THE SHINING or ROSEMARY`S BABY). Like THE RING, Nakata`s superlative slice of J-horror was given the Hollywood treatment with a 2005 remake starring Jennifer Connelly.
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