Over the weekend, Grace and I managed to catch Dark Water, and now, I guess I can write another movie review after the longest time... you know the drill. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Dark Water:
The Pasig River Story

This movie was given the hype of being terrifying and scary, having come from the same minds who gave us the groundbreaking Ringu Trilogy. Of course, the hype remains to be proved, and after having seen the film, I am left wondering what is really supposed to be scary about the ruddy film.

As a product of a broken family, Ikkoku lives with her mother, and they recently moved into an old flat that was near Ikkoku's eventual kindergarten. Throughout the film, strange things happen to both mother and daughter. Ikkoku keeps on finding a red bag. The mother is seeing things. Ikkoku is talking an imaginary friend. The mom is finding something anomalous about the whole house. The movie was beginning to drag and be a theatrical vacuum cleaner: sucking and blowing at the same time.

So they find out that the floor above them was haunted, which explains why the water in the flat is polluted with... hair, and why there is a leak on their ceiling. Apparently, a young girl died by falling into a water tank in the building years ago, and all because her mother never came to fetch her in school.

Big deal.

There was nothing scary about the premise of the film. The girl didn't have any ulterior motive, or anything that was meant to fuel the terror, save for the last part of the movie, which was one of the most impressive twists I've seen in a film as of late. That bit with the mom actually getting the ghost kid and NOT Ikkoku was a fine bit of trickery, indeed. The mom, in the end, sacrificed herself to save her daughter, but that's about it. Nothing that'd make you feel absolutely creeped out, especially not if you're Filipino, seeing how recently, a man drowned in one of our water reservoirs already...

The movie was okay, as there were parts that were really scary (Again, especially the final twist.), but there was no feeling of impending danger. All I could really see was a soul looking for her mother, but there was no vendetta, no rhyme or reason to why it had to be them who were there, and not some other random family or whatever else. The storytelling and the coherence were choppy at best. This was what made me sorely disappointed and wish that I was watching Naked Weapon instead...

Still, it was worth catching once. It's not worth a second look, though.

Marcelle's Evaluation: C+