~Cast~Dark Water (2005)
~Cast~
Jennifer Connelly................Dahlia
John C. Reilly.....................Mr. Murray
Tim Roth.............................Jeff Platzer
Dougray Scott.....................Kyle
Pete Postlethwaite..............Veeck
Ariel Gade...........................Ceci
Directed by..........................Walter Salles
My Rating:
"Yuck! This popcorn tastes like someone gizzed all over it!!! ::spits popcorn::"~Me
Yet again a remake is upon us and yet again I must sit and endure idiots being terrorfied by predictable crap that has been done time and time again. Dark Water not only retreads the same path as every other film of its kind, it also does it in a way that bores the shit out of you. I really wish someone would tell me why I am supposed to be scared of 5 year old kids that whisper and neglect to blink their eyes while staring off at some random spot. Apparently, I am not getting it because to me, it's not scary. Screams were erupting and seats were bobbing back and forth during this especially during the paint by numbers ending and I have NO idea why. Have these people never seen a fucking horror film before? Do they not realize that when the movie still continues on AFTER the supposed murder has been solved....that IT IS NOT FUCKING OVER!? If this is the future of horror movies, then we have a genre that is going to die off very quickly.
Dahlia's marraige to Kyle is on the rocks, they are going through a divorce so Dahlia is forced to move, her choice of places is this 2-bit run down apartment which has only one good thing...it's close to the school. Dahlia's little girl, Ceci, begins liking the place once she finds an imagionary friend named Natasha who surprise surprise, is making her act weird and do bad things. Such as screwing up her paint jobs in class, talking to herself, and worst of all...knowing random facts about mommy that make her flip out! Wow...this sounds SOOOO SCARY....but thats not what is scary...there is a black spot of dripping water above her kids room, which is blamed on the room above having the entire place flooded. Thing is...it's been abandoned...ooooooo....scared yet? I know I'm not. So this crap goes on for another 80 minutes of her trying to figure out what is going on until she finds out and it's exactly what we all thought....(spoilers spoilers spoilers)...yes Natasha is a ghost...is in fact real...and in fact was accidentally murdered....BY HERSELF!! Apparently Baby Einstein over here thought it would be fun to go to the roof, climb the water tower and peek inside...so of course she falls in and drowns. Now she wants a mommy for hers ran away and she chooses Dahlia to be that mommy. Such a great storyline...such a great ending...such a great waste of my fucking life. In the end, Dahlia dies and all the intelligence that could have been put into this (every other subplot) is wasted and goes no further then to confuse us till we find out the BIG TWIST. Luckily...this movie tanked.
Connolley is a good actress but this is beneath her, she is trying to cash in on the Naomi Watts success with THE RING but unfortunetly for her, this film doesn't even come close to having one eighth the talent the remake had. The directing in this is god awful...but we shall get to that later. This was billed as a horror movie, I don't care that is was more of a thriller or drama...it was BILLED as a horror movie. That is what I came for, that is what I expected. I did not come to watch Dahlia cry over her mother and then pray she didn't go crazy while throwing in a scene to confuse us into thinking this movie is more then just that. This movie was garbage plain and simple, why critics are loving this is beyond me, I neglect to see what is so good about this even if I look at it with that kind of concept in mind, that its a drama/thriller...it STILL SUCKS!!!! NOTHING HAPPENS IN THIS FILM!!!! Like White Noise....we have our character staring and bitching about the same damn thing throughout this whole thing. "My ceiling is still leaking...can you fix it?" 30 minutes later...."Hey, I talked to the manager, he told me to tell you to fix it" another 30 minutes later "I fix ceiling for you now...stop the leaking" yet another 30 minutes "The ceiling is leaking again!" ....WHAT THE FUCK IS SO SCARY ABOUT THAT!?!? WHAT!? THIS IS A PATHETIC GHOST STORY AND A PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A MOVIE!!!!
To the acting, Connolley does ok in this, she has done a lot better in the past and while she was believable in the role, some of her reactions were either not strong enough or over the top. One scene she starts crying over a girl in the toilet (not ruining everything) and it seemed so beyond forced that I could smell the onions under her eyes. John C. Reilly plays Mr. Murray the landlord and his character was probably the most entertaining...and very underused. Which is a problem in this movie...Tim Roth plays Jeff Platzer a lawyer who is basically living out of his car who tries to help Dahlia with her divorce...he is introduced half way through the movie and is nothing more then a character that serves as "she should go with him" kind of thing. Which in the end falls flat since...well...it just does. Dougray Scott plays Kyle the asshole husband and when he wasn't being a douchebag, he wasn't on the screen. Pete Postlethwaite plays Veeck the russian janitor who in my opinion was the best character in this movie. He stole the show and he was way under used, I wish they had him more, maybe then it would have ended up being a better movie. The other shocker was Ariel Gade who plays Ceci, this little girl has a certain charm about her that actually works. Don't know what it is, but she wasn't annoying like most little kids in movies. Her and Pete were the 2 that made this movie bareable.
Directing wise...this film is god awful...did this guy NOT go to film school!? What the fuck! First of all, this film crosses the lines a million times, which means that one second a character is shown on the right....then the screen cuts and they are on the other side....this is a big no no and I know I am gonna get email saying "SO WHAT!!! DOESNT HURT MOVIE" but fuck you, it does so deal with it. Not only that, but the movie is done in such a way that take you right out of this film and realize it is nothing more then that. I don't know, maybe he is better with his other films, maybe not, but this film was hurt big time by his incompetence.
The gore....there was none. Not a drop of blood, we get "frightening images" Yeah...that is just what I wanted to see...this film has nothing to keep us entertained except for the hope men will enjoy looking at Jen. We do...but not with that much clothing on. Never have I seen so much water with so little shown in my life...shit...for you idiots...that means NO NUDITY!!!
I say, this film stunk on all ends, there is nothing redeeming about it at all aside from when the credits appear and you can sneak out of the theatre and have it appear you came from a movie that didn't suck. I would say this should be a good lesson to those big wigs about remakes, but then shit like Ring 2 makes tons of money so expect a lot more of them to be remade. They should have thrown the negatives of this crap into the DARK WATER of the pacific.
Special Guest Reviewers:
George Newman
"who the hell would have ever thought that watching a girl getting wet for 90 minutes could be so damn boring!?"