Dark Water (2005 American Remake)

[rufus13th]

Man I felt the film was pretty pathetic. If you've not seen the Japanese version then maybe it's ok... however I felt it came close to being a scene by scene rip off.

It tried to be original by involving a lot more of the minor characters, namely the husband, but these scenes feel redundant. There is no tension and even cheap Hollywood jump frights are kept to a minimum.

The ending was the worst, very anti-climactic and disappointing. Plus in typical Hollywood style - everything is nicely explained to the audience.

SPOILER

Part of the fear was lost by knowing what the main ghost girl (Natasha) looked like, quite early on in the film. In the Japanese version, her face is obscured in the poster and even when we get to see her in the flesh, her facial features are too disfigured to make out.

I don't see how Natasha can mess around with the plumbing in the school.

There was a lot of unintentional humour. Like when Jennifer Connelly's character opens the tank, gets a fright... then opens the tank again. Later we see the ambulance/police come once... and then again in the space of a few hours. Plus John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite were used as comic reliefs, which was utterly embarasing. The Japanese one had no humour, non stop suspence and chills all the way through.

END SPOILER

Obviously if you hated the Japanese version, don't even bother with this.

[Metarie]

My main pet peeve with American remakes of Japanese films is that they often do a scene by scene remake. Why? What purpose can this possibly serve? Don't the USA directors ever realise that if a film is so good they want to copy it and make no changes then maybe it doesn't need to be remade?

[rufus13th]

Yeah they'd be better off providing an English dub or something on the DVD...