Holy crap...Dark Water is the worst movie I have EVER SEEN

Cafe Society
1

Well, I think the title speaks for itself. This movie was absolute swill. I mean, the utter bottom of the barrel. The great cast (including some of my favorite actors, John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite) could not save it. It was boring, non-scary, horribly paced, and utterly anticlimactic.

Without spoiling anything for those of you who are planning to see the movie (DON’T!) I’ll try to describe what frustrated me about it. It was essentially the same couple of scenes repeated over and over again. Someone stares at ceiling, looking at dark water…little girl has feelings of fear, accompanied by musical crescendos that lead to nothing…Jennifer Connelly has heart-wrenching (bah) retrospective about her distant mother. Over, and over, and over.

You expect a plot twist and none happens. You expect a character to develop, and s/he does not. You expect something to scare you, and you are let down again. The fear element of this movie consists of a few totally generic “ghostly little girl” pop-up jump scenes (barely even) apparently snatched from Ring 2’s cutting room floor, happening at totally predictable moments.

I understand that this is a remake of a Japanese movie, and that it is supposed to be “Japanese-style horror.” The thing is, Japanese culture and its attitudes towards ghosts, death, and fear, are very different from those of Western moviegoers. There may be intensely frightening and sorrowful emotions connected to the absence of family and the trapping of a soul inside the spirit world that would resonate very powerfully with a viewer who was from Japan. In my opinion, these things do not translate to Western audiences, because of our different cultural values and what we have been conditioned to fear. This movie wasn’t made in Japan and it wasn’t made for Japan. I would rather have watched the Japanese movie with subtitles, if only for the authenticity, than be subjected to the ham-fisted American represenation of it anyway.

Now that my logical and scholarly dissertation about the movie is over, I’ll get back to my pure vitriolic hate. This movie sucked donkey dick. I hate movies with little kids, especially little kids that have “invisible friends.” What happened to Leatherface? Michael Meyers? Where’s the heart-pumping adrenaline and the ghoulish villains? Even the “jump scenes” didn’t make me jump. I actually liked Saw, and personally I didn’t mind 28 Days Later. So why is this Dark Water crap marketed as a horror movie if it has no horror in it?

I’m not just a slasher or zombie fan. I love a good psychological thriller too. But Dark Water isn’t one of those either. There’s nothing thrilling about it. There is no suspense and tension. There’s really no interesting psychological concept to wrap your head around either. No plot twists…no plot at all, really.

Bunch of bullshit. This movie is garbage. Don’t waste your time. And it drags on so much, too! You’ll feel like you sat in the theater for four hours.

2

The original Japanese version wasn’t very good either, IMO.

3

Whoa… whoa… WHOA…
That’s like saying “I actually liked the taste of feces in my mouth, and personally I didn’t mind eating Chef Ramsey’s risotto.”

4

saw was one of the better ‘horror’ movies i’ve seen in recent years.

5

I’m not in love with the movie, but I think it’s far from being the worst ever…the thing is, I don’t think that this is supposed to be a scary ghost story. The fact that there are a few attempted scares thrown in there understandably throws the viewer off, though. Here’s what I mean by it not being a “scary” ghost story:

Unlike The Ring (in my opinion the American version is far better than the original Ringu) or Ju-on: The Grudge (definitely see Ju-on instead of the American remake), this isn’t really a vengeful* ghost. (Forget about the awful The Ring 2 here, which has a similar story element added to Samara’s tale) This is a story about a tragedy, a ghost of a little girl who was abandoned by her parents, reaching out from death to a kindred soul in Connelly’s character. It’s supposed to be kind of sad and tragic, and not so much “omigod it’s a creepy white Japanese kid!” Yeah, there’s some horror in the whole idea, but I just don’t think that it’s the focus of the story.

Of course, it’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it. I’d say that, among Japanese horror remakes, it’s one of the weakest so far…but the worst movie ever? Really?

6

Dude, you went to a freakin’ Disney movie and expected to to see horror?

7

The ending of this movie made me cry.

I cried and cried, realizing I had wasted eight dollars that I could have spent on something better for my brain, like a tube of hobby glue and a plastic bag.

8

The tap-dancing scene is what ruined it for me.

9

If that weren’t a joke, I might go see the movie. Because … tapdancing!

10

What makes you think I’m joking?

[sub]okay, I’m joking[/sub]

11

I suppose, The Skeleton Key ain’t out yet. By the trailer, I suspect this movie to be a turkey.

12

I really don’t understand the vitriol directed toward this film. I just saw it. It was enjoyable and I didn’t feel cheated.

Do horror movies by definition have to involve lots of slashing and guts?

13

I don’t know much about the movie, but that’s some first class, topnotch, Grade-A ranting.

14

I’m not saying that it’s the greatest film ever made. But it’s not a film I would rant about like the OP.

15

I heard something about it on NPR not too long ago. Apparently, dead wet girls are all the rage in Japanese horror (J-Horror).

Dark Water

Not my cup of tea.

Although when the two girls were standing at the end of the hall in The Shining, THAT made my hair stand on end.

16

Well, even the director, Walter Salles, hates it and is trying to distance himself from it. He claims that the studio forced a final cut on him that wasn’t what he wanted to do. Hard to believe that the director of City of God could make such a boring movie, but that’s what happens when a talented director quits making movies he loves from the heart in favor of director-for-hire shit for Hollywood studios.