Entering Dark Water

The radiant Jennifer Connelly.

At first glance, Dark Water might seem like just another Japanese horror film, in the vein of The Ring, remade for American audiences, but when the film stars one Oscar winning actress, three Oscar nominated supporting actors, and an Oscar nominated director, you can bet that it's going to carry more weight than your average horror film.

The plot revolves around Dahlia, a woman going through an ugly divorce, who moves with her young daughter to a rundown apartment on New York City's Roosevelt Island. Not only is Dahlia forced to deal with all of the day-to-day problems that come with divorce and moving, but she must also confront the demons of her own childhood as well as the creepy goings on in her new apartment building, which include a continuous leak from the apartment above -- an apartment that has been empty for many months. High strung and afflicted with migraines, Dahlia's grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality is tenuous at best. Are there ghosts in the building, is her husband trying to make her appear insane so that he can gain custody of their daughter, or is it all just a creation of her fevered imagination?

The screenplay was adapted by Rafael Yglesias from the original Japanese film and book, although several concessions had to be made to Americanize the work. "In the original film for instance," he describes, "she waits a week before reporting the leak. I knew that in New York it would only take about 5 seconds before a complaint would be made in the same situation." For inspiration, he turned to another supernatural thriller also set in a New York City apartment building; Rosemary's Baby. The central story however remains fairly consistent with the original, as Rafael puts it, "Plumbing, I discovered, is universally creepy."

Directing the film is Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries). It was the screenplay, with its themes of abandonment and urban solitude that moved Salles to direct his first Hollywood movie. He also felt that, "What you didn't see was more important than what you saw." The absence of blood and gore was also appealing to him as was the central tenant of the story, which was that we all carry the ghosts of our past inside us.

At the center of the film and in nearly every scene is Dahlia. To play this demanding role, the filmmakers turned to the beautiful and talented Jennifer Connelly, fresh off of her Oscar win for her role in A Beautiful Mind. "I have always been very affected by horror stories," she says. "It's interesting to me how these little things that start as everyday annoyances, like a leaky ceiling, turn into something so terribly huge and scary. Reality and nightmares start to merge."

Tim Roth, who plays Dahlia's lawyer, says that one of the things he looks for when accepting a role is who he will be performing with. He has only praise for Connelly, "She's an actor first and then a movie star and with that priority I think she's pretty much guaranteed herself a long career."

Jennifer Connelly in Dark Water.

Joining Roth and Connelly, and providing some comic relief, is Oscar nominated John C. Reilly as Mr. Murray, the real estate agent who convinces Dahlia to take the apartment. Says Reilly, "I felt like, how many apartments and houses have I looked at over the years and how many of these guys have I met. It takes a certain type of hustler to be involved in real estate."

The other character which looms large in the story is Roosevelt Island itself. Situated in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, and the former home of a mental institution, it is a place that most New Yorkers never visit. Perhaps its one claim to fame is the tram (featured in the first Spider-man film) that still runs from the city to the island. While the interiors were shot in Toronto, all of the movie's exteriors were shot within the city and the wind and rain swept island is appropriately creepy for the story.

For those who complain that America is remaking too many Japanese horror films, screenwriter Rafael says merely that what goes around comes around. "The Japanese are being influenced by the smaller American films of the 60s and 70s, and are in turn influencing the American films of the new millennium."