WILLIAM FLANIGAN DARK WATER / FROM THE DEPTHS OF DARK WATER / GLOOMY WATER'S BOTTOM FROM (Lit) (HONOGURAI MIZU NO SOKO KARA). Viewed on Streaming. Director Hideo Nakata (also a screenplay co-author) slowly and meticulously builds a scary psychological/supernatural drama for grownups (which means it does not have to resort to blood or gore). This is a tale centered on a multilevel battle over the protection/possession of a six-year old girl. The heavy-duty plot includes: (1) a bitter custody fight over a daughter where the father's game plan for winning is to demonstrate the metal instability of the mother (to a family court); (2) a super-stressed mother (with an apparent history of mental issues due to being abandoned by her mother) attempting to find shelter and re-employment (in Yokohama) with supernatural abilities (apparently inherited) and an overactive imagination; (3) the mother's "discovery" of a run-down, virtually deserted apartment house close to a kindergarten school that just happens to have a roomy, under-priced empty apartment in a set up that has her ex-husband's sanity-destroying finger prints all over it (starting with the over eagerness of a real-estate agent and off-putting remoteness of the resident manager (perhaps hired to stage "mysterious" happenings?); (4) an apartment house that turns out to be haunted by a six-year old girl who was abandoned by her mother (and is searching for a surrogate) and then, apparently, was abused by maintenance workers and drowned in a highly elevated water-storage tank (on the building's roof); and (5) an erratic, sluggish, and scary-looking elevator in which strange things happen especially at the film's end (there's only one of these in a seven-story building with, perhaps, 60-70 apartments and no freight elevator in evidence!). Nakata ultimately has the mother simultaneously fighting to keep her daughter from the clutches of her sort-of-shady ex-husband and the murderous spirit of the drowned girl. Just about everything that water in any form can do that is disturbing or bad for your mental/physical health is in this movie! A tour de force and a de facto advertisement for bottled water! Not surprisingly, superstitions widely shared by Japanese are cleverly incorporated into the film (perhaps, you can spot them?). Actors are well directed with attractive leading actress Hitomi Kuroki providing a stunning performance (despite being saddled with a wardrobe that does her no favors). Child actress Rio Kanno seems perfectly cast and delivers an excellent and, at times, spooky performance. Supporting male players are very good. Score is chilling. Subtitles are close enough, but you have to turn on the closed captions (CC) function to see them! Most signs/text are translated as are the lyrics of the end-credits song. Fear, dread, surprise, and suspense are generated without the usual phony audio jolts and jump-cut editing employed by movies of this genre. Highly recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD. Details: streaming (HD) = 9/10 stars; cinematography (semi-wide screen, color) = 8/9 stars; lighting and color correction = 8 stars; direction = 7/8 stars; set design/dressing = 7/8 stars; sound = 7/8 stars; score = 7 stars; subtitles/CC = 7 stars; translations = 6 stars; costumes = 4 stars

The Movie Diorama Hideo Nakata must have a fascination with girls and dirty water. He took the world by storm with 'Ring' which involved a creepy girl in a well, and now this. A single mother and her daughter move into a new apartment in order to try and win sole custody of her child. However, she starts experiencing unexplainable sounds and startling visions which questions her mental well-being. An interesting combination, and one that works effectively. Merging supernatural tension with a family's emotional struggle, the symbolism and metaphorical analogies of divorce is apparent. How it can destroy not just the people around you, but also belongings and ownership of possessions. One may consider the ghostly entity to be a reminder of the emotional distress you can go through during a divorce. Other perspectives may just include the fact that she moved into a dilapidated complex where her ceiling is leaking. That's right, two valuable lessons here. Firstly, if your ceiling is leaking...abandon your home and save yourselves. Secondly, if you are running late to pick up your child from school...God damn tell someone! Nonetheless, Nakata directed another chilling horror with many effective camera placements where ghostly imagery can be seen in the distance. Hitomi Kuroki beautifully acted the innocent mother, she held the film together. Really emotional scene towards the end where mother and daughter are separated by an elevator, I felt the feels. Whilst it is a horror, it's not particularly scary. It's more focussed on the family drama. The ghost's motives were extremely ambiguous. At certain points she becomes aggressive and malicious, but her unfortunate demise was her own doing. I'm not entirely convinced that she needed to be the antagonist, particularly during the third act. I can see why, it just felt rushed and spontaneous. Also the last ten minutes could've been cut to make a tighter film. Yet again, another good Japanese horror where the American remake pales in comparison.

Viator Veritatis Now that Japanese horror movies are in fashion, any third-rate flick like this one reaps all kinds of undeserved praise.Japanese don't make real movies but rather filmographed manga cartoons, with no effort to build up a logical plot. This was true for "The ring" and it stays true for this botched attempt at a movie. It is slow-moving, derivative and entirely devoid of any action. There are very little scares if at all. The plot is extremely predictable and has holes as big as skyscrapers. Perhaps this abortion may appeal to people interested in some tepid childhood drama, but even that is so half-hearted and lackadaisical that it adds very little interest.The only redeeming feature are the performances of the two main actresses. Only recommended to trendy viewers interested in getting all warm and fuzzy with the latest cinematic vogue.

felixoteiza This is the most depressing flick I have seen in my life. Also the one with the dumbest end twist. I wish someone has warned me beforehand, as they would have spared me 2 very sad hours. That's why this will be, rather than a review, a warning for the reader so what happened to me won't happen to him/her. Now, I would have never taken this one home if it wasn't for the fact that I have been watching some pretty good supernatural Asian flicks--The Eye, Ringu and so on--and I got carried away. But that stops there; no such luck here, this one is to miss, if you don't want to feel like shooting yourself after viewing it.This is rare flick in that it never gives you a break, never lets up. Thoroughly depressing, just as Irreversible is disgusting, and that from beginning to end. There is absolutely no light moments here, no pause to the horrible things happening to the protagonist, no comic relief, no ironic social comment; nothing of that breather, that distancing from reality, that you need so when watching a litany of sad events; that little something that will tell you that, after all, you are just watching a movie. See, this is about a poor young woman who's not only engaged in a bitter custody battle with the father of her 6 year old daughter but who at the same time has to find a new job and to get set in her new apartment--in a creepy old building, where water is pouring all over, without management giving a hoot about it. On top of that, she starts sensing some strange things going on there—frequent steps on the empty apartment above hers; mysterious, fleeting shapes, silhouettes walking on the roof—all that while her kid starts acting weird and having fainting spells at school. But her main problem is that she seems to be all by herself in the world, the only two people with whom she seems to relate in any way—besides the school personal and the Child Services--being her ex, who'll do anything to take her kid away from her, and some sort of white knight of a lawyer who appears as from thin air and who seems ready to sly dragons for her but who won't be there when she'll need him most. This point is driven by hedge hammer to us, from beginning to end, in case you missed it: the poor soul doesn't have any luck, she doesn't get any break; nobody in the world is there to lend her a hand; no parents, no brothers or sisters, no friends--all that in a society where, we're told, family & friends are so important. As for myself I venture that the main cause of all that is simply that she's stupid, as you'll see now.So, the film starts with her moving to that apartment in that old, rickety, building, which for all purposes looks already abandoned, as we won't ever see anybody but her in it, except for a couple of old folks in the lobby in just one occasion, so you'll be excused if you think she is actually living in an abandoned building. Now, why I'm saying she is stupid. For aprox. 90 min. the point is driven to us, also with a sledge hammer, that her kid is everything to her, that she just couldn't live without her. Naturally, we feel also her panic when she temporally loses her; we tremble with her when we realize the ghost--as there's a ghost in the building--is going after the daughter and we are horrified when it seems to have gotten her for good. Now, before going any further, the ghost is that of a girl of the same age who lived in the apartment above hers, who was abandoned by her own parents and who went once for some reason to climb to the top of the water tower, fell into it and drowned. All that without anybody ever noticing what had happened and giving from then on the girl as disappeared. Now, what occurs in the crucial scene I talked about is that this ghost girl appears physically to her, the woman, in the elevator, and grabs her and starts calling her "Mom", presumably taking her for her real mother, all that in front of the horrified eyes of her kid. And what does the woman do then? She waves her child good bye, she abandons her! having decided to become a ghost also and do babysitting for the deceased girl. All that after having babbled for about90 min. about how much she loves her kid! Didn't I say this is the dumbest end twist ever in a movie (and had this woman ever seen Ghost Whisperer?).In all, a depressing, inane, waste of time. One to ignore. 2/10.