|
|
  
Back Shelf Beauties
|
Dark Water Sometimes, a movie is bad, you walk away knowing it, but it doesn't effect your life one way or another as it fades from your memory on the ride home. I wish I could have that kind of peace of mind when it comes to Dark Water. This movie is horrifically stinktastic and causes you to question the sanity of everyone involved in its creation. Oscar winner (What went wrong? Does she owe back taxes or something?) Jennifer Connelly stars as Dahlia - the disturbed, divorced mother of a young girl, Ceci (Ariel Gade). They have moved into a creepy building on New York's Roosevelt Island, and it happens to have the worst plumbing ever (Plus, it rains ALL THE TIME!). Dahlia has started to notice some water damage on the ceiling, which is dripping into her daughter's room, and she begins to hear some strange noises in the apartment above her, so it's only a matter of time before Dahlia goes up there and discovers something wacky is going on. Is she going crazy? Is the apartment haunted? Is it those meddling kids? When not yawning, you'll be laughing your head off as writer Rafael Yglesias (based on a novel by Koji Suzuki and the subsequent Japanese film) and director Walter Salles create an absurd horror film that refuses to end. Suzuki and the other writers on the team (Hideo Nakata and Takashige Ichise) also created The Ring and The Ring Two, so it's no surprise that many of the same elements are lifted from those two and shoved into Dark Water. Sadly, you can't be sued for plagiarizing yourself, so they go ahead and do it with no real ramifications other than our unending rage and resentment. We see a single mother struggling to raise her kid. The kid seems to be developing a psychological problem which manifests itself in the form of an invisible friend. The kid starts to draw troublesome art work, etc., etc., etc. Dark Water's story is effortless, lazy and paint by numbers, and Salles doesn't do much to help it. Slow moving doesn't begin to describe Dark Water's pace. Luckily, I had a large soda before the movie (caffeine is my friend). Salles meanders along for an hour with some slightly scary and eerie developments, but never raises the tension to a satisfactory horror film level. Instead of accelerating the pace of the eerie moments and making them scarier and scarier as Dark Water proceeds forward, I guess Salles was trying to establish some sort of moody tone, but fails horribly. Eventually, he presents the audience with a jarring, disappointing ending thrown in because it's about time to end the film, but doesn't stop there. Salles gives us three endings, each one a little worse then the next, until you want to walk out of the theater to protest the absurdity of it all. With little support from the script and story, Connelly and co-stars John C. Reilly and Tim Roth are left to do what they can. Connelly does a fine job acting a bit wacko, which keeps the audience in doubt about the apartment's possible supernatural visitors. Reilly is hilarious as the fast talking leasing agent who shows her the apartment in true New York style, while Roth comes in later to be the movie's voice of reason as Dahlia's life starts to spin out of control. All three should be doing better work than this, but it pays the bills (like those pesky back taxes, college fund for the kids, or down payment on a lovely Malibu beach house). As Dark Water approached its first ending, I thought it would get 1 Waffle. Then, it was downgraded to ½ Waffle for the second ending. After the third and final ending, 0 Waffles seemed most appropriate. If you leave early, you might like it better. 0 Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2005 - WaffleMovies.com
|
