Dark Water and the Ring 2 are the same movie, written by the same Japanese hack. What the fuck is it with these drowned white/Japanese girls? Or, better yet, what the fuck is it with these movie producers? I know it's good business sense, aiming for the lowest common denominator and all that, but I could have seen one of either of these movies and saved money and time.
They are both empty movies, meaning nothing much happens. Long empty stretches of film where you wait. This is called "building suspense" and it only works in the theater. On DVD you fast forward till you see something jump out at somebody or appear out of nowhere, something ugly usually. Give Dark Water credit for not having some overblown CGI character ripping off the The Exorcist walking on the ceiling or whatever, but both movies have the same audience: young hysterical women who have never seen a real horror movie. Young hysterical women of both sexes.
Truth is, for either one of these movies to actually scare you, or any movie out of Hollywood now, you have to be already emotionally overwrought.
Dark Water is about a recently-divorced mother (Jennifer Connelly) who moves into an apartment with her daughter, and they are haunted by the little girl who used to live in the apartment directly above them. The Ring 2 has the incredibly hot Naomi Watts and that girl from the well, only now she doesn't need you to watch the video to come after you. Oh, and it has, and a little boy.
It's hard to make a scary movie. I mean, seriously hard. It takes originality across the board, and a back story that you can only hint at. It takes a ghost that is badder than anything you can show with an R rating. You need (still-living) human characters that you know, even if you don't care about them. It needs a new gimmick, wet girls with their back to you is old.
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