The next pair in our look at originals and remakes goes to that period in the early 2000’s where Hollywood was grabbing any Japanese horror movie they could get their grubby little hands on to remake with an American cast. Unlike some of the more famous J-Horror titles of that era, Dark Water felt like it slipped under the radar with both the Japanese and American versions not really talked about as much. In fact, it took probably a good 10 years after the remake came out for me to even realize there was an original at all.

Yoshimi is currently going through a divorce and is fighting to retain custody of their daughter, Ikuko. In order to show she can give her a stable life she has to quickly get a new job, find a new apartment, and get Ikuko enrolled in a new kindergarten. This means having to take a job at a smaller company than she used to be at, enrolling in a school she isn’t sure of, and moving into a sketchy building where the roof is leaking and the landlord doesn’t seem to care. The problems escalate as Yoshimi begins to see a creepy little girl in a yellow rain coat and the problems with the apartment get worse and worse. With her ex-husband doing everything he can to take Ikuko from her and moving meaning he might end up with her, she has to decide how best to protect her daughter.

Dark Water is a movie all about the deep horror that comes from having to live in a shitty apartment with no other options and I’m only half kidding. Sure, there is a ghost story that is also here but it is so backgrounded and not particularly scary that the actual tension comes from watching a single mother attempting to keep it together when everything is falling apart around her due to no fault of her own. It also plays into the generational trauma a bit where we see Yoshimi as a kid not getting picked up from school and her own parents going through divorce and we see her trying so hard not to make those same mistakes with her kid but history repeating itself anyway. It’s more sad Japanese drama most of the time than spooky ghost story but with just enough atmospheric tension to keep it in genre.

I do like that the movie does a good job of really getting around the haunted house question of “why are you people still in there” by both not making the apartment overly threatening just inconveniently shitty and also by having an entire scene with a guy debunking Yoshimi’s worries and getting things taken care of. It’s interesting that the movie also doesn’t end where you would assume it does but has a time skip and ends on a more melancholy note than the sad horror ending you think it is going to have. That is all in service of, again, making the movie more about the way in which a single mother tries to protect and care for her child rather than focusing on scary ghost stuff. It makes sense why this wouldn’t have been as big with American audiences given the lack of any real scares or gore and the slower dramatic pace.

While a well made movie and certainly thematically strong, it also ends up being a bit bland for those looking for something with real horror to it.

Score: 3 out of 5