Movies at the theater are becoming ever more expensive for a 90 minute sitting. Almost to the point where it's no longer worth the price of admission... I find I'm not going as often due to this reason and am opting for rentals on DVD a little more often. For this review, I opted for the DVD version.

It seems like it's always raining in New York in Dark Water, which seems necessary in order for the story to work, since the central tenement in which the film takes place is only scary when it's dealing with big, bad roof leaks. This derivative thriller, ultimately, doesn't work, mostly because it isn't that scary and it doesn't ring true with any believeabilty.

In Dark Water, the images are saturated in lots of grimy colors to produce a bleak, dirty, wretched, poverty setting . The audience is apprehensive about the "new" building already, but it's all poor mom Jennifer Connelly can afford. Recently separated from her husband and in the midst of going through a messy divorce, Connelly takes her young daughter Cecilia to live in a yucky, rundown apartment building on Roosevelt Island.  Actor John C. Reilly has a wily and daft charisma as Mr. Murray, the slumlord who pushes Connelly to move in. His con artistry is more clever, and devious, than the rest of the movie.

You almost immediately want Connelly to move out once the creaky apartment starts falling apart ( and most people in their right mind would ). It would have been smart to add a scene where Connelly admits that she has chosen the wrong apartment dwelling for her and her daughter to live in, but the dialogue by screenwriter Rafael Yglesias has no offerings of such obvious insights. The story suggests that Connelly cannot move, perhaps because she's afraid that she will lose custody of Cecilia to her rat of an ex-husband  if she can't prove in court that she's capable of making permanent adjustments. Connelly's only ally in the world is her lawyer.

The crucial troubles begin when the upstairs apartment begins to leak through Connelly's bedroom ceiling. Pete Postlethwaite appears as the quack building maintenance man who finds excuses not to move in on the job. Connelly is left to investigate the upstairs tenement, where she finds that it's completely flooded and perhaps haunted by ghosts. In the movies these days, ghosts seem preoccupied with harassing young children, which is exactly the case here.

When Cecilia becomes too dependent on carrying on a relationship with an imaginary friend, you know that the friend is not really imaginary: it's a ghost! A couple of scenes are low-key enough to give you some legitimate jitters, but the film goes off the deep end by throwing scare gimmicks at you, such as a washing machine in the grungy basement that acts possessed.

Low-key atmosphere and high-concept freak-outs don't really go together. Imagine how Rosemary's Baby would have been diminished if it was smacked with a bunch of scenes of doors opening themselves and toilets exploding. Or imagine if Psycho featured Norman Bates prancing around in his mother's dresses before the shower scene. Dark Water is filled with ominous atmosphere comparable to Hitchcock or Polanski but is undone by inane horror picture clichés. The final sequence of terror, in particular, is appallingly unscary because it's been depleted of any rational sense.

I did like The Ring when it was released ( and did actually see it in the theater ). I never got the pooprtunity to check out The Ring Two though..... I was hoping upon the rental of Dark Water, that it would follow suite with The Ring. It does and it doesn't. Dark Water seemed to me, that the script wasn't written well although I give a thumbs up to the actors and their abilities to act. The movie, although not horrid to watch and worthy of a rental,  left me feeling it's lackluster of a good storyline.

On that note, I rate it a 5/10.