Jennifer Connelly plays Dahlia Williams, a young mother who has recently separated from her husband and the child’s father Kyle (Dougray Scott – looking eerily like Bayern Munich midfield powerhouse Micheal Ballack). Dahlia and her young daughter Cecily (Ariel Gade) are looking for a new apartment. They find an affordable one on Roosevelt Island. The landlord Murray (John C. Reilly) is almost Dickensian as he extols the virtues of the horrid apartment. The janitor/super, a strangely-accented Mr. Vek (Pete Postlewaithe) is mysterious and suspicious. The building itself is old, creaky, leaky and wretched. It is, however, affordable.

After they move in, they discover a strange wet patch in the ceiling. It is perhaps, the most chilling wet patch in the history of film and immediately unsettles Dahlia as she begins her new start.

More worrying, though, is the news that Cecily has developed an imaginary friend. Dahlia fears that it may be the result of the trauma of the child’s parents’ separation, and it becomes a weapon for Kyle in his attempt to gain custody of the little girl.

As the damp patch increases, and after futile requests to Murray and Vek to do something about it, Dahlia takes matters into her own hands and investigates the apartment directly over her own. In true horror movie style the door mysteriously opens when she knocks. And in true horror movie style she enters. The flat is flooded with all the taps running, a strange blood-coloured liquid coming out of them.

Inside, things start to get really frightening and so it begins. The flooded apartment was apparently home to a family – two parents, one young girl child – who have been away for the last few months. Nobody, that is Vek or Murray, seems to know where the family have gone, but Vek reveals that some teenage boys who live in the building break in there to hang out and do whatever teenage boys do.

As the story unfolds Dahlia must find a lawyer to represent her in the custody battle for Cecily. Enter Jeffrey Platzer (Tim Roth), a low-key but effective lawyer who comes on the recommendation of Dahlia’s friend’s brother. We then learn that Dahlia has some psychological problems, which Kyle intends to use as a stick to beat her with. Gradually we get the full picture and see Dahlia as a mother desperate to protect and hold onto her daughter, in a world which is falling in around both of them.

Matters come a head with a thrilling, chilling (and maybe a bit over-the-top) climax. However, the resolution is a bit unsatisfying and the morality is unclear and a little bit ‘fairy-tale’-esque.

’Dark Water’ works as a complex supernatural movie, mainly because of the skilful atmospheric treatment by Salles. Visually everything is dark, dank or damp. No city has seen so much rain since Limerick was doused in Alan Parkers ‘Angela’s Ashes’. The interiors of the apartments are poorly-lit and full of muted tones. All of this adds to the atmosphere. There is little joy in the movie, other than the scenes of Cecily in school – but those are highly-charged as well.

On the acting front, Connelly is good, very good. Conveying all of the pain and confusion of a parent caught in the middle of something as terrifying and bewildering as she is, the Oscar® winner is believable and realistic. Elsewhere, the supporting cast of professionals like Roth, Postlewaithe and Reilly is, as would be expected, good and solid. Roth’s mole-like lawyer becomes, surprisingly, the only beacon of humanity available to Dahlia in a cold world. Postlewaithe’s eyebrows can carry more pathos than most actors’ entire bodies. And the always-good Reilly is obviously enjoying his turn a nasty unscrupulous landlord, straight out of a Dickens novel. Newcomer Ariel Gade as the haunted Cecily, is very convincing, as a little girl caught up in the twin worlds of the supernatural and the all-too-human horror of marital separation.

Hollywood is still looking to the far east for inspiration in the horror genre and the goods are still coming. My theory is that in a country like Japan, where superstition, religion and a respect for spirituality still exist, belief in the supernatural leads to the production of great horror fare, like the Ring etc. In the increasingly spiritually-bereft west, where we are too sophisticated for such things as superstition let alone religion, we fail to think like that.

’Dark Water’ is not without its faults. Principally, as I mentioned already, the final resolution of the plot is not entirely satisfying. There are a number of threads left not tied up. Whether this is part of the Salles plan or not, remains to be seen, as much of the film, like Salles’ previous work is highly impressionistic.