Parents' Guide to

Dark Water

By Cynthia Fuchs, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

This scary movie is too creepy for little kids.

Movie PG-13 2005 105 minutes
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What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

Dahlia's had a troubled childhood and is going through a custody battle over her daughter, Cecilia. When she and Ceci (Ariel Gade) move into a new apartment, Dahlia starts to notice strange things that she connects with previous tenants of the apartment above hers. While she fights her ex, Kyle (Dougray Scott), for custody, she also must deal with the supernatural – the ghost of a little girl abandoned by her parents.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say Not yet rated
Kids say (4):

Pushing the edge of PG-13 with regard to scary scenes and family tensions, DARK WATER's greatest strength is Jennifer Connelly. As Dahlia, a young mother in the midst of divorce, Connelly delivers a delicate, moving, and utterly convincing performance. A remake of director Hideo Nakata and writer Kôji Suzuki's 2002 film (they also made Ringu, source for The Ring), Walter Salles' movie creates a world that is rainy, spooky, and grim.

Dahlia's fear of being a bad mother like her own drives her to take repeated horror-movie style risks (walking into empty rooms, exploring the building's roof at night). Dahlia's experiences -- past and present, inside and outside, night and day -- begin to blur, as she's either believing or fulfilling Kyle's judgment that she's "wacko." She turns to a lawyer, Platzer (Tim Roth), who appears alternately quirky and reassuring. On one level, this seems funny (or ironic), that the lawyer is so unable to bring order to her nightmare; on the other hand, his inability to help suggests that Dahlia is abandoned, much as she has feared since she was a child. Horror movies frequently use the figure of the ineffective or bad mom (not to mention the murderous father; see the recent Hide and Seek), and so Dahlia's selfless resolve seems almost bracing. But Dark Water never develops either her particular dilemmas or responses beyond generic conventions. By film's end, it seems, she's still waiting.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the tensions between mother and daughter, in part caused by the mother's past (indicated by nightmares and flashbacks). How does the daughter's "imaginary friend" worry her mother? How does the antagonism between mother and father exacerbate their daughter's fears of abandonment, loss, and retribution? How does the external world (specifically, the apartment) serve as metaphor for mother and daughter's internal states?

Movie Details

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