Dark Water (5 Stars)

They say that it only rains in a film if it's somehow important to the plot. That's understandable. It's uncomfortable for the actors to get wet, and it's even worse for the film crew with their expensive equipment.

"Dark Water" has a lot of rain. It's raining in most of the outdoor scenes. Noticeably, the weather in the film's final scene, the epilogue, is dry. The change in the weather is a change in mood. There's also a lot of water in the indoor scenes, caused by the water leaking from the ceiling.

Have you ever had water dripping into your bedroom? It's happened to me. I used to live in the ground floor of a house in Birmingham. One night water started dripping onto my bed. I went upstairs, and I was told it was water leaking from a washing machine. The first floor was rented by two sisters, Anne and Marcia, and they hadn't correctly connected their washing machine. They'd merely laid the water-out tube in their sink, and the vibrations from the machine had shaken it out onto the floor. They apologised and said it wouldn't happen again, but it did. The tube was still loose in the sink, or on the floor. I urged them to call a plumber to connect it, but they didn't. A few months later it happened yet again. By this time I was severely annoyed, but luckily they moved out.

Anyway, in "Dark Water" there are other problems. The taps in the bath are turned on by themselves, flooding the apartment. And there's a creepy young ghost who's haunting the house they live in.

The director Hideo Nakata is best known for making "The Ring". That's a good film, but I don't consider it up to the quality of "Dark Water", which is the scariest film I've ever seen. It's only in 95th place in my top 100 films list. It should be much higher, but I don't want to push any other films down. It's tough rating films.

There was an American remake of "Dark Water" in 2002. I only watched it once, and I was disgusted. That was a long time ago. Maybe I should give it another chance.

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