Yoshimi soon begins to experience strange events for which she cannot explain. All the while the stress in her life is getting worse. Is there some mysterious force out to harm her or is she loosing her mind?

Review: Hideo Nakata brought us the legendary Ring, before the hype took over this movie it was one incredible find. Now as Hollywood is remaking Ring Hideo Nakata brings us another Japanese psychological horror called Dark Water. This man certainly has a talent for turning the mundane into the frightening, this time he does it with water and not deep water, just a small puddle that will just creep you out. You might wonder what can be so frightening, I myself cannot explain it. This movie has a certain atmosphere, all the elements come together to form this ambient creepy vibe. Camera angel, sound, colour, music and lighting, its just all perfectly synchronised to make you feel slightly unnerved and tense as if something is not quite right. Truly and experience that you can feel.

The story starts off quite ordinarily, everything is alright but there is an initial gloomy feel to things. Small things will happen slowly at first and become more serious as the movie advances. The tension keeps rising during the whole time and a story starts to become a little clearer. Near the end a lot becomes clear, you will possibly figure out a couple things before the characters do, this will make things a little predictable but also there will be a couple of surprises to your predictions not turning out how you guessed. The story evolution from start to near end is great, the ending itself was not very good. It could have ended in a much better way but I'll let you be the judge of the ending.

The majority of the story unfolded around Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki), at first glance her character seemed really panicky but taking into considering all the problems her character suffers like the custody battle and the weird events her performance makes complete sense. Mind you I did not find that her character added to the fear factor in the movie, having her freak out at the strange events did not make me freak out anymore, it is just freaky to begin with. As for the supporting cast Rio Hanna who played Yoshimi's daughter put on a good performance, in fact its impressive for a young child to play such a serious role in a psychological horror film.

For the most part this is a very slow moving film, its basically everyday life mixed in with a few odd things that will build up to something bad. Due to the creepy vibe that runs through this movie the slow pace is not really noticeable and the story keeps an entertaining flow. In any case some patience is required and especially attention to make this movie enjoyable.