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| DARK WATER (2005) - PG-13
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ReviewScore: 54 out of 100
SBD Star Rating:
by Lew Irwin
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 Critics, who rarely give positive reviews to horror flicks, have mostly fine things to say about Walter Salles' Dark Water. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times even includes a little essay on the sentiments of film critics in his review: "I have been criticized recently for giving a pass to films of moderate achievement because they accomplish what the audience expects, while penalizing more ambitious films for falling short of greater expectations. There may be some truth in such observations, but on the other hand, nobody in the real world goes to every movie with the same kind of anticipation. If I see a film by Ingmar Bergman, as I recently did, I expect it to be a masterpiece, and if it is not, Bergman has disappointed me. If I attend a horror film in which Jennifer Connelly and her daughter are trapped in the evil web of a malevolent apartment building, I do not expect Bergman; if the movie does what it can do as well as it can be done, then it has achieved perfection within its own terms." He gives Dark Water three stars. Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer also writes positively about the movie, saying that it "pushes every button on the parental-fear keypad: Divorce, loss of custody, loss of child, loss of domicile, loss of mind. Salles doesn't tap a horror gusher, but trickles a steady panic drip. While his movie lacks the psychological resonance of Rosemary's Baby or The Sixth Sense, it easily equals their creep-out quotient." The also draws some negative reviews, but, for a horror film, none of them is horrible. For example, Gene Seymour writes in Newsday: "Dark Water is all suggestion and moody inference setting you up for a payoff that seems itself like an apparition." And Claudia Puig writes in USA Today: "Dark Water has more substance and a more interesting look than many horror films, but the familiar elements of the story disappoint." |
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