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'Dark Water': Head games make it more than just ghost story

By BOB LONGINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Like its sister ghost story "The Ring," the little-girl-lost "Dark Water" originates from Japan and involves an overly demanding specter, creepy moments and a heck of a lot of H2O.

What sets "Water," starring Jennifer Connelly as a mom in a stare-down with a girl ghost, apart probably won't impress the legion of "Ring" fans. The latter film emphasized a dead little wench climbing out of a well, through a TV and into the personal domains of about-to-be victims. "Dark Water," a sometimes equally impressive film but one challenged by following in "Ring's" shadow, is more interested in what's going on inside Connelly's head.

Touchstone Pictures

'Dark Water'

B-

The verdict: Not as scary as "The Ring" but a better head-case study.

Director: Walter Salles
Starring: Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott, Pete Postlethwaite
Run time: 105 minutes
Release date: July 8, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material, frightening sequences, disturbing images and brief language.
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This is as much a psychological drama as it is a ghost story. The two mix and mingle till, in a big splash of water, they become one.

Japan's Hideo Nakata directed both original Asian versions of "Water" and "Ring." Gore Verbinski ("Pirates of the Caribbean") then Americanized "Ring," turning it into a mass-market, otherworldly mystery with go-getter Naomi Watts as a kind of mature Nancy Drew.

Brazillian director Walter Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries") heads this English-language version of "Water." His approach is more subtle. Boo scares are at a minimum. And he backs his story with a collection of fine actors. In addition to Connelly (an Oscar winner for "A Beautiful Mind"), "Water" has Oscar nominees Tim Roth, John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite, each playing slightly oddball, slightly suspicious characters.

Connelly is Dahlia, a soon-to-be-divorced New York mother with a young daughter, Ceci (Ariel Gade). They're in need of cheaper digs and end up in a stark, industrial-style apartment complex of uninviting brick sameness on Roosevelt Island. It's a home Salles treats with the same austere, cinematic mystery that Roman Polanski cloaked over the much trendier and even more forbidding exterior of the Dakota in "Rosemary's Baby."

The trouble starts soon in Dahlia and Ceci's new home. It always seems to be raining. The elevator operates sometimes like it has a mind of its own, there are goopy-looking water drips in the bedroom, globs of black hair coming out with the water in the bathroom sink and, suddenly, Ceci's got a new imaginary friend.

Dahlia's got her own brain quirks. She's haunted by memories of her alcoholic, inattentive mother and, eventually, finds photos that look a lot like her own family in the mysterious, often water-logged and people-less apartment upstairs.

Before you can say ghost, Connelly's character is having emotional breakdowns, bad dreams and visions of a little girl as lost as she ever felt as a child.

The ghost may be in the picture, but this is clearly Connelly's film. She infuses Dahlia with strong motherly instincts and just a twitch of mental imbalance. Broodiness suits her.

Her performance also overrides the guilt by association with "The Ring."

Maybe "Ring" is spookier. But "Water's" female character is the better woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.