Dark Water - original movie, book and ending theories

[Lord_Galvatron]

Bah my Copy of Dark Water is on BACKORDER!!!! Of the 13 DVD's I ordered last week that was in the top 3 I would've watched first if all had arrived the same day, now it appears it will be the LIST!

[Fulltime Ando Lover]

Originally Posted by Scuz

Dark Water- My impression is that the mother gave her life to put Mitsuko's ghost to rest to protect her own daughter, and either she had to stay there and act as mother to keep Mitsuko's ghost from going after her own daughter again, or anyone elses', or...she never really got the chance to tell her daughter how much she loved her and say goodbye properly, and so her ghost lingered on till her daughter came to visit and she finally got the chance.

That's what I believed too when I watched it. Did anyone else find the bit where...

Spoiler

The girl is crying for her mother as the elevator goes down with Mitsuko and her mum in it?

End Spoiler

That was pretty sad.

[Lord_Galvatron]

Originally Posted by Mandi Apple

If your French is great, look at this coolness: http://www.chapitre.com/ - do a search for Koji Suzuki and you'll see they stock Ring (natch), Loop, Rasen, Ring 0, and Dark Water (!!!!) For real!

As usual, the French get all the good stuff, aeons before it gets any release anywhere else I'm not joking, you can pick up stuff like Charisma with French subs on amazon.fr really easily and cheaply

'S not fair, boo hoo hoo

it's coming out in English from Vertical, or so I read on Ringworld, and Vertical's Website

[asagaitomato]

Originally Posted by Fulltime Ando Lover

Spoiler

The girl is crying for her mother as the elevator goes down with Mitsuko and her mum in it?

End Spoiler

That was pretty sad.

oh god yes....totally. it always brings a little tear to my eye




the fact that the girl who plays ikuko is cute as a button doesn't *sniff* help *sniff*

[Scuz]

Originally Posted by Fulltime Ando Lover

Spoiler

The girl is crying for her mother as the elevator goes down with Mitsuko and her mum in it?

End Spoiler

That was pretty sad.

That part was soooo sad. And the only reason I don't watch that movie very often...



"Lingered"...? Do I even know what that means? :? Must have been Edison (my 2nd half) talking there....

[Rasen]

Spoiler

The girl is crying for her mother as the elevator goes down with Mitsuko and her mum in it?

End Spoiler

That was pretty sad.

The film should've ended there IMO, the "epilogue" seemed clumsy and unecessary.

[Little_Emily1984]

I dont think it should have ended there. I think the ending when Ikuko goes to visit the old apartment and she sees her mum there. I like that part because it sort of showed that yoshimi was still there protecting Ikuko, especially when mitsuko appears behind her and yoshimi changes and acts all distant.
I never noticed about her speech sounding like it came from the tank. I only rented it once so theres a few bits i need to see again.

The end elevator scene made me cry. Poor Ikuko. My boyfriend sayd he wants our future child to be as cute as her!

[Smashingblue]

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but I just watched this movie, so hopefully someone else wants to comment. Maybe what I'm about to say is a bit off the wall, but here goes. Isn't it plausible that Yoshimi decided to keep going up the water tank, open up the hatch and get pulled in herself? That means when going into the apartment for Ikoku she was already dead; a ghost herself. This would explain why when the water comes rushing out of the elevator on the top floor that her body doesn't come rushing out with it. This would also explain why the last scene sounds as if it's from inside a water tank.

[Mandi Apple]

Hi, and welcome to the forums

And thank you for a really fascinating theory! In context, that does make a lot of sense (from what I remember - it's been some while since I last watched the movie) - I need to go back and watch that final scene so I can take notice of the sound on it now... thanks for sharing that with us!

[Saint Pseudo]

This post contains spoilage!

Your theory is interesting, and I'll be listening for the sounds, too, next time I watch it. I think, though, that if Yoshimi is already dead before the elevator scene, it lessens the sacrifice she makes when she tells her daughter to stop and come no closer. If she's already dead, then she has little choice but to go with the dead, but to be ALIVE and to CHOOSE this sacrifice for her daughter's sake--that's what makes it so powerful. Also, if she were dead, would she not recognize the dead, realize which child she was really carrying to the elevator? . . . just a thought, maybe not.

And in reference to the Epilogue, for me it was very important for many different reasons . . . The mother is truly good, and it is right for her daughter to understand that her mother did not merely abandon her, but spends every day of her afterlife continuing to exist just for her. This is diametrically juxtaposed to the dead girl's mother, who just up and left one day, with no thought for her daughter at all. This ending was one of the creepiest moments, because the enormity of Yoshimi's fate becomes clear. That dead child is not growing up and is not moving on; Yoshimi will be in this hell forever. 8-O

(Any thoughts on the remake? I personally hate the remake phenomenon, as it gives me another reason to be embarrassed to be American. I do like Jennifer Connelly, however, and I did think that The Ring showed respect for the original. If nothing else, it means that I'll be able to purchase a GOOD copy of the original, and I can discard my VHS taped off of late night cable access.)

[Mandi Apple]

Has anyone yet read the newly-released Dark Water collection of short stories by Koji Suzuki, which the movie was based on (I believe the name of that particular story is Floating Water)?

I've just finished the segment on which the entire movie was based and, you know, I can't tell whether I like the written version or the movie version better

Both have different things going for them IMHO: the short story elucidated a particularly grisly detail for me which I hadn't picked up from the movie, which really creeped me out, but at the same time, I think the movie carries a great deal more emotional weight.

That said though, I liked the way there was little in the way of supernatural events in the story - the true horror was in the reality of the situation rather than the haunting. I'm not sure that came across in the movie so much - but that's just a subjective feeling...

What did you guys think? I'm looking forward to devouring the rest of the book - I'll post again when I've finished it It's good stuff, though, I definitely recommend it so far

[Yani]

Originally Posted by Mandi Apple

Has anyone yet read the newly-released Dark Water collection of short stories by Koji Suzuki, which the movie was based on (I believe the name of that particular story is Floating Water)?

--

What did you guys think? I'm looking forward to devouring the rest of the book - I'll post again when I've finished it It's good stuff, though, I definitely recommend it so far

Sounds good. Nice to see all that stuff being widely released.

[barcarolle]

I have read the short story from which the movie was based on... I actually read the book first so was quite surprised when I saw the movie which differs quite a lot from the book, especially the ending. i wld usually go for the book, but this time around i prefered the movie because it felt more satisfactory on several levels. The ending in the book is the book was especially disappointing, without giving the game away, it was more a case of 'cldnt be bothered to write a proper ending, just figure out the whole thing for yourself!'

[Mandi Apple]

Did you read the French release, barcarolle? Or did you manage to find a different English translation?

In a way, I almost preferred the ending of the story in the book - I never really bought into the movie's ending, so for me ----> spoilers   just having the mother escape with the daughter and move to a safer place, no matter what the inconvenience to themselves, rather than staying behind knowing that they were in danger <---- seemed to be, as a mother of a young daughter myself, possibly a more convincing/realistic outcome...

[barcarolle]

I actually read the French translation. I know what you mean by saying that the ending in the book was more plausible, it is, when I think about it. but although it actually made more sense i still felt a bit let down. I dont know how to explain it.

speaking of books, I remember reading the book version of ringu 0 and it didnt make much sense to me, again I thought the movie was better... and dont start me on 'spiral' the book or whatever it was called, I just felt completely clueless!

oh, and I have a weird theory about Dark Water. It might have been mentioned before in which case, sorry :p Its just that............................WARNING!!! THIS IS A SPOILER!!! EVACUATE NOW!!!!!!!!!

when I though of the little girl, surrounded by water in a dark place, banging on the tank from time to time, isnt it some kind of twisted version of pregnancy??? probably just me!!!!

[Mandi Apple]

*** SPOILERS ***

Originally Posted by barcarolle

when I though of the little girl, surrounded by water in a dark place, banging on the tank from time to time, isnt it some kind of twisted version of pregnancy??? probably just me!!!!

*lol* That is such a fabulous interpretation!!! I think you might well be right barcarolle

After all, isn't Koji Suzuki some kind of expert on childbirth and child-rearing? It would make sense for him to make that parallel! Excellent theory!!

*** END SPOILERS ***

I quite agree though: even though it makes more sense, maybe it's not quite as lingering and ambiguous as Nakata's ending...

Actually, now reading more of the book - and having only read Ring beforehand - it seems to me that Suzuki doesn't include an awful lot of supernatural elements in his horror writing - it seems much more grounded in reality.

So that leads me to believe that the screenwriters in tandem with Nakata are the ones who are making all the supernatural magic happen - building heavily on the source material. Certainly much of Floating Water has little in common with the movie IMHO - and I do like the addition of the really supernatural/haunting elements a lot

[barcarolle]

Cheers, I am glad you like it I can even expand the theory:

-----------------------------s-p-o-i-l-e-r----------------------------------------

I have seen the film some time ago, but I seem to remember a scene towards the end where the doors of the lift opens and water comes flooding. since this is towards the end, this might represent the heroine's waters breaking, giving 'birth' to the ghost child from which she had been 'pregnant' during the whole movie. since the issue of motherhood is so central to the movie, this might actually make sense in a weird and twisted kind of way.

[Mandi Apple]

It really does follow a strong logic, I don't know whether it's a conscious or unconscious parallel, but it's certainly a very exciting and enlightening theory - I'm of a mind to put my hand up and subscribe to it

[johnmcf2005]

******SPOILERS THROUGHOUT******
I watched the start of Dark Water a few weeks ago (Well, up to the part where Ikuko's mother (Yoshio?) went into the flooded apartment. It was at that time I was told to turn the movie off because my friends hate Asian cinema. I recently watched the rest, thinking that there was not much of the movie left to go, and that I probably wasn't in for any kind of shocks. How wrong I was! Even though I had seen it before, I was creeped by the time that Mitsuko could be seen almost floating past the door of the penthouse on the roof. Towards the end of the movie, I was really feeling the tension. Particularly when the red bag was found in Ikuko's schoolbag. At the part where the bath kept filling, I knew something was bound to happen, but it just didn't happen when you thought. After that, when Ikuko's mother carries her (supposedly) out of the apartment to the elevator, but then Ikuko walks out of the apartment, I knew what had happened. I waited for it to happen, but it never did, until Mitsuko jumped up, and, I only seen it briefly, but was her face all inflated and distorted? Anyway, that REALLY scared me. I had been waiting for an asian film to truly scare me, and finally one did! I really love this film! The ending was really sad, I thought, with Ikuko being abandoned. I never thought about things like pregnancy, being parallelled by water flooding out of the lift, and the girl banging on the tank, but that is a really interesting theory. In the book of short stories, which I got a while ago, but wouldn't read till I had seen the movie (good move, the movie's stroy is so much better and conclusivce than the book's) the story is similar in places and a lot different in others.

****SPOILERS FOR "FLOATING WATER" (Dark Water Book)****
The story didn't end with Ikuko being abandoned, it ended only with her mother realising what was in the tank: Mitsuko. It did still make the red bag a thing of fear, but it didn't have the water patches, because in this version, Mitsuko's apartment is on the floor below the Matsubara's. This for me made it a little less effective. It's a good story though, and I intend to read the rest once I finish reading Battle Royale.
****END OF "FLOATING WATER" SPOILERS****

Dark Water in my opinion is extremely under-rated by a lot of people. I don't know why, but those eerie, Sepia-tinged flashbacks really chilled me to the bone. I really want to see the US Remake, and I don't understand why it has been delayed until August... When it ws due out in January! One regret I have though, is that before I seen the film, I tried to find out a little bit about it, and finding out that the ghost's name is Mitsuko, kinda wasted it for me, because in my eyes, finding out her identity would be a major plot revelation. I still really enjoyed it though, and it was the first asian film that really made complete sense to me. I interprited the elevator doors opening to flood the halls with water at the end to represent tears, because of what just happened to Ikuko, or to symbolise Mitsuko's death in the water tank. I even jumped out my seat at the bit.

****END SPOILERS****

[soulsteelgray]

Originally Posted by johnmcf2005

I really want to see the US Remake, and I don't understand why it has been delayed until August... When it ws due out in January!

Actually, it was supposed to go head-to-head with The Grudge way back in October 2004. Test screenings didn't go too well, so they're taking their sweet time to tweak the movie, hence all of these delays.

My problem with Floating Water was that it just... Ended. Quite a bit of a letdown after having already seen the movie and enjoyed it immensely. (Though The Hold, Adrift, and Watercolors were excellent; I felt that the plot twist of Watercolors felt sorta forced, though, like Suzuki just wanted it to end for the sake of ending it.)

I hope Dimension will be able to do wonderful things with Adrift. That short story was amazing, and felt like a novel compared to the meager 4 page adaptation in the manga. Definitely one of the better short stories, if not the best in the collection. (...C'mon, where's the movie rights for The Hold?)