Modern Classics series - number 7 : Honogurai mizu no soko kara / Dark Water (2002)

Directed by Hideo Nakata ; written by Ken'ichi Suzuki, Yoshihiro Nakamura and Nakata.

Nakata made his name in the West as the director of the breakout cult hit Ringu/ The Ring (1998) and four years later he returns to many of the themes of his previous film for this excellent release.

Once again it's alienation within modern society, the ties of family and the persistence of memory that provide the jumping off points for the story.

Hitomi Kuroki is Yoshimi, a woman in the midst of a divorce who moves with her six year old daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno) away from the family home and into a run-down apartment in a dilapadated old tower block. There she begins to be haunted by visions and physical manifestations of the daughter of a former resident who went missing a few years previously.

Yoshimi and Ikuko are the only two fully realised characters in the film; others are there only to help move the story forward or to provide context. One or other of them is on screen in every scene of the film.

If there is a supporting cast it's provided by the apartment building itself which seems to develop a character and personality of it's own as the story progresses - the damp patch on the apartment's bedroom ceiling growing in size as Yoshimi's paranoia increases, the lift which has a distinct air of menace about it, the deserted corridors with their dark corners and shadows and the water tank on the buildings roof which becomes of increasing significance to both main characters.

The entire piece is an exercise in the building of tension - it's obvious almost from the first that there's something not entirely right about the new home but Nakata allows the pace to slow so that each new event or revelation contribute to a bigger picture. By the time we reach the last third of the film there's an almost tangible sense of dread in every shot.

Clever audio design allows sound (or it's absence) to contribute to atmosphere, the whole thing is artfully shot Jun'ichiro Hayashi and the two leads are both excellent.

A clever, well designed and delivered old fashioned horror story that relies on atmosphere and character to provide it's shocks rather than CGI monsters and/or buckets of gore.

There is a dubbed into English version which is pointless and less effective and a 2005 US made version with Jennifer Connelly in the lead (directed by Walter Salles) which manages to do away with almost every element that makes the original so absorbing.