Dark Water - The little yellow horror movie that could...

Dark Water (2005) - Dark Water is the story of Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) and her daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade), pronounced "sess e," beginning their new life after a divorce. They move into an apartment complex that is falling apart because the rent is cheap and the location is excellent. Once making a speedy deal with the shady landlord, Mr. Murray (John C. Reilly), they move in. Immediately, bizarre things start happening, such as Ceci finding a Hello Kitty backpack on the roof even though there are no children in the building. Once the duo have moved in, strange leaks start appearing in the ceiling of their apartment and upon further investigation they are caused by odd occurrences in the currently unoccupied room "10F," the room above theirs. Eventually, Dahlia begins to break down due to these happenings while Ceci deals with her "imaginary" friend Natasha. The film then follows the two into their adventure of craziness.

The first hour of this movie should have been called Boy The Plumbing Above Us Sucks because that's basically all the film focused on. Leak after leak in the ceiling and Dahlia trying to get someone to fix them while Ceci sits around talking to herself. Is there some rumor floating around Hollywood that if you give your characters odd names that it makes them more likeable, more identifiable, and in general is just a better idea? Anyway, for the first hour there is no ghost haunting these two, no crazy murder plot against these two, no CGI cat up to wacky hijinks, just the daily lives of these females. You literally sit there thinking to yourself "Wow, this all could've been solved a long time ago if Dahlia wasn't a goddamn moron and would call her lawyer or maybe just a plumber." Instead, she continues to bitch and moan about her ceiling but never takes action to actually solve the problem.

Things finally start to pick up once Dahlia contacts a lawyer for her custody battle, Jeff Platzer (Tim Roth), who turns out to be the most likeable character in the movie. After the hour of repeated "dark water" puddles appearing and Veeck (Pete Postlethwaite), the grumpy, foreign handyman, mopping it up events, different subplots begin to unfold. The two rebellious teenage boys that live in the building begin to harass Dahlia making lewd comments to her, the audience discovers that Dahlia suffers from migraines and paranoid delusions, Natasha may not, in fact be imaginary, Mr. Platzer constantly lies to Dahlia about meetings with his family, and the family upstairs had a little girl, yet both adults moved out some time ago.

The film then finally starts to gain some steam as Natasha begins to make her presence known and in some cases becomes visible, however, she turns out not to be a terrorizing little demon girl or even creepy, she in fact just turns out to want a hug and some lovin'. The film then takes a quick turn towards an event that, well, let's just say, it was predictable and you'll find yourself saying "Oh hey, I saw this movie before, it was called The Ring." That event becomes completely pointless, however, and ends up having no impact on the storyline. The film then takes another random turn. Then once more, it takes another quick turn. I'm not giving these away since it's not even worth spoiling, but let me say that it seemed as if the writer had three different endings and couldn't decide which to go with, so instead of adding an "alternate endings" section on the DVD just tacked all of them on to the theatrical release. Hence the title of this review, I drew inspiration from The Little Engine That Could, it just kept on going and going, "I think I can I think I can" but it, in fact, couldn't. I found myself thinking that the movie was incredibly predictable and the few times I thought "Oh, here we go, now it might finally get good" it would just fall flat. Despite the fact the film continued for much longer than it should have, it never explained or wrapped up most of the subplots and events I stated above. The film ended up being another horror movie where it takes great self-restraint not to laugh or roll your eyes into the back of your skull.

I'm not sure why the creators of this film decided it would be a good move to underexpose the film and add a yellow overlay to the whole thing, perhaps they thought it added to the ambience and atmosphere surrounding the film, however, it just comes off as cheesy and bothersome through out the duration. The one decent thing about this film was the casting of Jennifer Connelly as a single mother as she is probably the only young actress out there currently that you could believe would be able to take care of a child. Connelly proves in this film that she is the absolute best at wearing average, every day clothes while still managing to look incredibly gorgeous. Good on you Mrs. Connelly.

When you leave a theater and the film you saw was supposed to scare people, however, even the young girls are saying "That wasn't very good," you feel like like you know you just wasted your time. When a movie is written as a horror movie and ends up trying to teach some lesson about motherhood and family, you feel like like you should've just sat home and watched that Geico commercial with Tony Little on repeat for an hour and a half. If you're thinking of spending $8.50 to see this film, head to Wal-Mart and buy The Naked Gun and an issue of "Playboy" and I guarantee you'll have spent your money much more wisely.

I went into this film having heard bad things about it, and therefore, I felt it belonged on the Brendan Fraser scale. I feel it has earned a solid rating of Blast From The Past/Bedazzled ( **** 1/2 )