Flipside Movie Emporium

[Dr Giggles]

*SPOILERS***

Plot Summary:

After winning a custody battle for her daughter Hitomi tries to make a new start. The apartment she moves into seems perfect at first. Soon though, strange things begin happening. Huge water stains appear on the ceiling and drip constantly, more liquid oozing into the rooms every day. She calls the landlord in but he refuses to do anything about it. A childs red bag shows up in odd places and soon the child herself starts appearing. Hitomi then discovers the origin of the ghost...

I really enjoyed the subtle ghost story prodominatly about abandonment

and paranoia. The slight twist in the end was really well put forward, when we were worrying about Yoshimi losing her daughter, her daughter lost Yoshimi, and in the end, the doubt we had about Yoshimi's parenting abilites were gone when she made the ultimate sacrifice for her daughter.

A really moving and touching ghost story, that didnt focus on scares and frights, rather the fear of losing a loved one, and the abandonment felt with broken families.

wow.
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walking on air, up from the wheelchair,

I'll find the suicide, that I deserve.

[the night watchman]

I'm looking forward to seeing this. It finally gets a US release this winter, so I'll have comments then.
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"If you're talking about censorship, and what things should be shown and what things shouldn't be shown, I've said that as an artist you have no social responsibility whatsoever."

-David Cronenberg

[Jim Harper]

Dark Water is definitely worth seeing. I feel there's an identifiable progression in Nakata's work from Ghost Actress, through Ring and onto Dark Water, with a more confident manner and a definite 'tightening' of the shocks and scare scenes. For me this made Dark Water in some ways a more satisfying film than Ring. although it does also mean he's repeating himself to a certain extent. The film benefits from Nakata's love of melodrama, something he's tried to explore- to almost total critical and commercial indifference- in his non-horror films like Sleeping Beauty and Last Scene. It's always been there in his work, particularly the presence of family ties that are strained by the supernatural events. Hopefully he'll be able to bring some of the positive qualities of Dark Water to The Ring 2.