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A Filmmaker's Review: "Dark Water" (2002)

5/5 - Why did they bother making a Hollywood version?

By Annie KapurPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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I had already seen the Hollywood version of this film with Jennifer Connolly when I was on my way to watch this film on my laptop. However, I didn’t really like the Hollywood production of it and felt like it was a little over the top. The acting was not very good and the way in which it interpreted the story and its atmosphere wasn’t great. This is something I find a lot with Hollywood versions of Japanese films - that they fail to provide the same atmosphere and character intensity as their predecessors. I went on to watch the Japanese version of “Dark Water” (2002) and honestly, it was about a hundred times better than the Hollywood version.

The main character (who is played by Jennifer Connolly in the Hollywood version) is far more intense than in the Hollywood film. The atmosphere surrounding her is less supernatural and more intensely crazy. She feels like she’s going crazy in a world that tries to take her child away from her. It is less about the secondary storyline surrounding the other little girl and more about the way in which she is trying to protect her daughter. This is the way in which it is mainly different to the Hollywood version. The Hollywood version tries to make a bigger thing of the supernatural shit whilst the Japanese version takes a different approach and we feel more involved with the mother-daughter relationship and how this is changing based on the mother’s mental state.

When it gets darker, I feel like the Japanese version does a better job at being subtle and believable rather than over-the-top immediately. I feel like the Japanese version does a better job at working with the natural set in order to make the film look darker rather than putting in things to the set and trying to make it dark and strange. One thing that I really enjoyed about the Japanese version as well is the way in which this version makes the characters seem almost locked into the setting. This sense of being locked in and having claustrophobia is massively appropriate in this film and the way in which we see it is not just in the room itself but also in the hallways, and even to some degrees, outside. The hallways are not only encasing but they all look the same. Then we have the top floor where the roof is and the way in which the wired fences make the roof look dangerous but enclosing at the same time. We then have the water tank which takes up a lot of the space atop the roof and, along with the small amount of space around it as various people ascend the ladder in order to check it out, we get this really shadowy, small area where the main event is said to have taken place.

The characters, their stories and their madness is displayed very clearly in the Japanese movie and it is the psychological state which seems to take the front and centre stage. Whereas, in the Hollywood movie, it is the supernatural horror which takes the centre stage. I feel like the psychological sense makes the film far more intense, far more terrifying and far more appropriate for how the film chooses to portray the primary and secondary story. The primary story is the mother-daughter relations and how that is being portrayed in a small space with the mother clearly struggling to balance single motherhood, her job and the threat of having her child taken away by the father. The secondary story is the horror where we get the other child who haunts her kid and herself in the apartment building. I feel like in the Hollywood version, this is the wrong way around and that the Japanese version it feels far more believable and far better scripted. There is far more to be explored and seen in the Japanese version in terms of character and space. The Japanese version also has better acting where it is due, especially the children who have to act in very specific ways when they do or do not know certain things. I feel that the Hollywood version was not really required, it did not and could not improve on this one.

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About the Creator

Annie Kapur

190K+ Reads on Vocal.

English Lecturer

🎓Literature & Writing (B.A)

🎓Film & Writing (M.A)

🎓Secondary English Education (PgDipEd)

📍Birmingham, UK

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