I was so excited to see a movie in the upcoming list for my podcast that I had actually seen before. It’s been so long in a row that I’m kind of losing confidence in whether I’ve ever seen any horror movies. Then I got to the point last episode where they were doing the randomizing, and, you know what, aquatic scare, based on a book style? Yeah, that tracks. But then they did something that was incredibly obvious in retrospect but which I never saw coming. They picked the original Japanese version of Dark Water. Why wouldn’t they, unless the style was specifically “remake” or something?

Like I said, I’ve “seen” this movie, so there wasn’t a lot I needed to figure out about the plot. What details I had forgotten were non-critical, for sure. Thus, I was mostly watching for character beats. In the cast, we have: one kindergarten aged child, with no agency; one kindergarten aged ghost, with minimal agency; one ex-husband, who exists only to be an antagonist; one lawyer, who exists only to be a white knight; a handful of apartment employees, who use their agency to avoid taking responsibility for anything that’s happening; and one mother, who abrogates her agency whenever possible. Indeed, the pivotal moment of the story is her finally deciding to take an action, instead of being acted upon. (And even then, I could make a pretty compelling argument that she had no meaningful options open to her in said pivotal moment.)

If it sounds like I’m unimpressed, well, I am. But not with the acting or the plot, just with how the writing was on such hardened rails that all I could do was be annoyed with people for not making choices or with the story for not giving them any. Said story, at its bones, was this: an ex-wife is fighting for custody of her daughter against a father who never showed any interest until now, and he’s playing dirty tricks. So all her money is tied up in white knight lawyers, which means she has to get a pretty bad apartment. Like, water damage on the ceiling, cloudy water in the faucets, half the residences are empty, even the floors in some cases. And also there’s a spooky kid’s bag that keeps showing up in her daughter’s possessions, and missing child posters from years ago. And then it gets creepier.

Mood, mystery, I already mentioned acting, these were all fine. And I already complained about how few of the people who felt like real characters were also characters who could (or would) take actions. So I guess that’s the movie. All things considered, I think I liked the Jennifer Connelly version more. But, I would, wouldn’t I?

Update: I just learned from Google Translate that the name of the movie on the poster above is From the Dimly Lit Depths of the Water, and that’s just an all around better title. (I mean, unless you need to market it to American audiences as a horror movie, maybe.) So there is one thing I like better about the original, after all!