10 - The Michigan Daily - Monday, July 11, 2005
'Water'
o ffers
weak
thrills
By Jeffrey Bloomer
Daily Arts Editor
FiL~M REVIEW A i n
The drip appears as if out of nowhere.
It's a new apartment, but just the pres-
ete of the ominous leak - along with
the placid, pitch-black pool it creates -
evokes a preternatural apprehension that
goes beyond the
usual house-warm- Dark Water
ing jitters. And if the
apartment upstairs At the Showcase
is vacant, why does and Quality 16
it sound like some- Touchstone
one has the water
running up there?
By now, you think you know where
Walter Salles's moody "Dark Water" is
headed, but don't be so hasty. The honor-
able if not especially effective new addi-
tion to the AmericanJ-horror library takes
Hideo Nakata's ("Ringu") 2002 thriller
about a soon-to-be divorced woman
(played in this version by Jennifer Con-
neJly, in all of her natural radiance) who
moves into a haunted apartment with her
young daughter and digs deeper, develop-
ing into a maternal psychodrama with a
supernatural edge from the more straight-
forward ghost story of the original.
Granted, the film takes heavy inspira-
That's one tall babysitter.
tion from its predecessors. There's the
"imaginary friend," which, obviously, is
the ghost of a little girl who was aban-
doned or thrown down a well or whatever.
Meanwhile, the bathtub has these neat
glass doors, the indestructible kind that
horror movies love, which are particularly
helpful when the hooligan upstairs traps
young girls and uses them as collateral.
And let's not even get started about the
malevolent spirits who would rather swim
around in a washing machine than come
out the F/X-enhanced shadows and just
tell us what they're after in the first place.
But then the film surprises us. The sup-
porting players, including John C. Reilly
("Chicago"), Pete Postlethwaite ("Amis-
tad") and Tim Roth ("Silver City") as the
shady super, grounds manager and law-
yer, respectively, all harbor secrets that are
based more on their characters and less on
the requirements of the screenplay. And
the movie is more interested in the nuanc-
es of the mother and daughter characters
than the freaky apparitions that haunt
them, endowing the film with a genuine-
enough dramatic element that goesbeyond
the don't-look-behind-you schlock.
Alas, the two-front narrative never
finds any tangible coherence. The atmo-
sphere, a punishing, monotonous gloom,
becomes almost claustrophobic as the plot
continues to complicate itself, making it
tough to shake the feeling that the movie
never really knew where it intended to go
in the first place; it's a muddle of dubious
motivations and murky pasts that come
crashing into each other. The film is just
as uneven as it is unconventional, ambi-
tious yet haphazardly unsure of itself.
"Dark Water" marks the English-lan-
guage debut of Brazilian director Salles,
who dazzled art houses last fall with the
gorgeous but remote Che fairy tale "The
Motorcycle Diaries." While the film never
quite realizes its potential, it's hard not
to admire what Salles was trying to do.
Consider the final scene, where just when
we're ready for the obligatory, cheap, post-
climax final shock, he produces instead a
moment of almost startling tenderness and
intelligence. Had the whole film struck
such a level of spook-laced poignancy,
there might have really been something
here. But in the mean time, on a stagnant
summer night, this will do.
'Fantastic Four'
is an unholy mess
By Evan McGarvey Jessica Alba, in all her smoky beauty, is
Daily Arts Editor one of the most inept and disappointing
actresses today. She swings and misses
her every line and mark like a drunk
gray at a softball game.
Put away your favorite comic books. Of course, in this same 15-minute
The gravy train of high-art, psychologi- span, the newly transformed Chiklis has
cal comic flicks - "X2: X-Men United," managed to go from the mountain-side
"Spiderman 2," "Batman Begins" - has hospital to New York City. Guess the ter-
ended. We're never ror alert was low that day.
going to gossip Fantastic The broken-bones plot makes so
about which hunk- Four many convoluted assumptions (Mr.
let (Ryan Gosling? Fantastic can turn his body into
Barry Pepper?) At the Showcase a parachute? Jessica Alba went to
might get to play and Quality 16 M.I.T.?), that even the cheap special
Green Lantern on 20th Century Fox effects are forgotten.
screen. And if you While Alba can be ragged for her
want to talk about "Aquaman" the movie, deficiencies, the men are really the
you better watch "Entourage." pitfalls of the movie. Julian McMahon
"Fantastic Four" and the limp, motion- (TV's "Niptuck") takes Doctor Doom
less pile of beauty known as Jessica Alba from an evil genius and dictator to a
haven't just provided the coffin for comic pissy, metrosexual investment banker.
flicks - they've grabbed a shit load of Evans' Human Torch is a varsity-soc-
nails and gotten to hammering. The film cer, harshly pubescent tool who tries to
is so disjointed that it not only bastardizes turn every utterance into an "extreme"
its source material but throws notions like catchphrase. He also likes to snow-
time and space out the window. board in flames to a Sum 41 soundtrack.
Five minutes after getting caught That's extreme.
in a "cosmic storm," the crew of The action scenes are rushed, six-
Reed Richards (loan Gruffudd, "King minute, all-business affairs. Purists may
Arthur"), Ben Grimm (Michael Chik- try andslam the film's fairly blase source
lis, TV's "The Shield") and Johnny and material; the original comic was a post-
Sue Storm (Alba, "Sin City" and Chris WWII book, stuffed with blatant sexism
Evans, "Cellular," respectively), have (The Insivible Woman frequently faint-
awoken in a posh hospital, gone snow- ed in times of danger) and god-awful
boarding and mastered most of their plots. As much as nerds may disagree,
powers as Mr. Fantastic, The Thing, Marvel ain't exactly Checkov. A pas-
The Human Torch and The Invis- sionless effort like the one here would
ible Woman. After a 15-minute dinner cripple the thrills in a Hitchcock movie.
scene where the heinous dialogue gets Superheroes the world over should run
spewed between the flirting Drs. Rich- for cover if studios come after their lega-
ards and Storm, our fears are realized: cies with this insulting a film.
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