Who Ya Gonna Call? Roto Rooter?
DARK WATER

RATING: C-

Starring: Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott, Pete Postlethwaite, Camryn Manheim. Music by Angelo Badalamenti, Co-Producer Diana Pokorny, Costume Designer Michael Wilkinson, Editor Daniel Rezende, Production Designer Therese Deprez, Director of Photography Affonso Beato, Executive Producer Ashley Kramer, Produced by Bill Mechanic, Roy Lee and Doug Davidson, Screenplay by Rafael Yglesias, Directed by Walter Salles.

Rated PG-13, Running Time 105 mins., 2.39 to 1 Anamorphic Scope Aspect Ratio.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little sick of these J-Horror or Japanese Horror adaptations that Hollywood has been spinning out nowadays. It seems that the major studios love taking an idea or copying a genre and running it into the ground. I've ranted and raved much about it over the past year, so I'm not gonna waste your time because the folks in Tinsel Town 'aint listening anyway. You want to know about the latest J-Horror film, Dark Water, so I'm gonna cut to the chase and tell you. Jennifer Connelly is a luminous actress whose beauty has evolved and matured quite wonderfully over her twenty-plus years acting career. She has a knack for playing tortured individuals, but in my opinion her Oscar winning performance as Russell Crowe's suffering wife in A Beautiful Mind was more surface than in-depth. Director Walter Salles must have liked what he saw when he cast her in his American debut.

Connelly plays Dahlia a single mother who’s got quite a bit of problems in her life. For starters, her husband (Dougray Scott) has left her and is suing for custody of their young daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade). He wants Connelly to relocate to New Jersey so that he won't have to commute to see Ceci, but won't admit it's because his new girlfriend lives there. Connelly has limited finances so when she discovers a one bedroom apartment on Roosevelt Island for $900 a month she jumps on it. Actually the apartment's living room and bedroom are the same, it's dark, dank and run down, but landlord John C.Reilly makes it sound like a new coat of paint will cure all. Then there's the fact that the superintendent is a creepy old codger played to the best of his abilty by Pete Postlethwaite who refuses to perform any bit of maintenance on the building.

Things start getting even creepier when Connelly discovers an ugly black puddle forming on the ceiling above Ceci's bed. Postlethwaite claims that some teen punks in the building enjoy breaking into the abandoned apartment above her and flooding the place, but maybe that's not it. Black water like the type dripping from the ceiling occasionally runs out of the faucet, often with long stands of black hair in it. Is some spirit trying to tell her something? Ceci’s also made a new imaginary friend that may not be imaginary and the voice of a little girl can be heard singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" if you listen hard enough. Did I mention that Connelly is on medication and suffering childhood emotional scars because her mother abandoned her? Oh, poor Jennifer. Well it could be worse, her Labyrinth co-star David Bowie could show up to spook her, but he only does that in David Lynch films.

Bottom Line? We've got another Japanese horror adaptation that fails to scare. Why does it fail, because the little girl ghost premise is getting a little tired. Yeah, sure, it worked in The Ring, but you all got suckered with that film. Alright, maybe I'm being harsh. The Ring wasn't the worst of the bunch, it had decent direction, pacing and structure; it just didn't scare me. Don't be fooled by Dark Water's "From the author of The Ring tagline, they want you to thing you're getting the same movie and in essence you are. The stories are too similar to the point that audiences paying $10 admission will be more angry than scared. This will do for water towers what The Ring did for wells…nothing. When will the movies with small children communicating with dead children end? Well, if you get scared by this or flicks like The Grudge then you must be afraid of your own shadow. The film is very atmospheric with an impressive production design and color palette that's so bleak and dirty you might want to take a shower. Just not in that black murky water. Cinematographer Affonso Beato manages to one-up David Fincher with the film's rusty look and the fact that a portion of this film was shot in Toronto isn't apparent. This is one of the few films to make me feel as if it were really set in New York. Not the glitzy, upscale part of the Big Apple, but the dank and gritty areas that are hidden. But the idea that Connelly can hold a cell phone conversation deep in the subway is pretty far fetched.

I can see why Connelly signed on for this flick. Her handlers probably said something like "Look at what it did for Naomi Watts' career." Sure The Ring made her a household name, but she backed it up with several well written dramatic films that proved her acting chops. Connelly is no stranger to this genre having worked with Italian maestro Dario Argento, but surprisingly she's out of her element here. Then again, she seems out of her element in just about any flick she does because she still need to refine her craft. When will we see her play a strong individual rather than one who gets stressed out all the time? You call her Oscar winning role in "A Beautiful Mind" strong? I call that the Sharon Stone whiny approach. She gets starring roles while underrated actors like Tim Roth, as her lawyer, have to sign on for flicks like this to pay the bills. This movie would have been more interesting if it were about an apartment with a broken septic tank. The Ghostbusters can’t save this movie but maybe Roto Rooter can.