Dark Water

Let's just get this out of the way to begin with. I love scary movies. I love really scary movies. You know, the ones that keep you up all night for weeks, make you see shapes in the dark corners of your bedroom just as you're falling asleep, and burn terrifying images into your brain that you see whenever you close your eyes.

To clarify... Dark Water is not one of those movies. It had some effective cheap thrills, but the movie was just not that scary. And the worst thing is, within the first few minutes of the film, my friend and I both figured out the "big mystery" and it was all down hilll from there. One redeeming quality is that it had a creepy child. Movies are always better when there's a creepy child. So anyway, the movie is about a mother and child who move to an apartment building that looks scary all by itself. Let me tell you, even if I was extremely poor and couldn't find any place to live, I'd go to a homeless shelter before I'd rent an apartment that looked like this one. The halls and floors were dirty, the rooms had refuse left over from previous tenants, and the ceiling leaked some nasty "dark water." Which is where the mystery begins. What is all this nasty water and where is it coming from? Of course, you spend the rest of the movie knowing exactly what's going on because of a certain shot early on, but you have to watch the characters figure things out for themselves. It borders on annoying, actually.

Anyway, I won't go any further because I'd hate to ruin the surprise for those who don't figure it out right away. If you must, go see a matinee or wait for the DVD. Turn the lights off, turn the water on, and have a ball. But don't pay full price at the theater. You'll wish you hadn't. I do.