I am not typically fond of dark gloomy films illuminated by 12 watt bulbs; they reek of B-grade all over. Still, if one closed one’s eyes and thought hard enough, one could find some hidden psychological connotations in this trench cinematography from the bowels of suburban New York.
The meandering script tells of a broken family--mother and daughter, and a father scrambling for custody. The custody thing quickly goes nowhere. The little girl has imaginary friends. The dingy apartment in in tatters, leaks and all. There is an element of soaked dreariness about the whole affair. The screenplay seems stylized at first but does a pretty good job of testing your patience from about half its length onward.
As a clear attempt to flesh out on The Ring 2 and thus tinker with the horror genre, Dark Water is thankfully removed from your average screamer. It even offers a steady chill or two. But it goofs up royally with its climax--umm, all three of them. Or were there more?
I would probably catch it on cable, with liberal channel flicks, but here’s a film that’s not going on my wishlist anytime soon.