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Spooky 'Dark Water' is clear as mud

Lessons learned from the movie Dark Water:

No. 1: When renting a rundown apartment, always check the ceiling corners for tell-tale signs of leaks and always run the faucet to test the water clarity.

No. 2: When viewing a thriller based on an arty Japanese film, do not expect any more clarity than the faucet water. (See Lesson No. 1.)

Touchstone Pictures 'Dark Water' C The verdict: Spooky stuff and brown, brackish water pour through this thriller without a satisfying conclusion. Director: Walter Salles Starring: Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott, Pete Postlethwaite Run time: 105 minutes Release date: July 8, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material, frightening sequences, disturbing images and brief language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Dark Water"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

If only Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly), a newly divorced mom forced by financial woes to move to a creepy apartment building on New York's down-scale Roosevelt Island, had heeded the first lesson, we might not be stuck disappointed by the murky results.

Apparently eager to have a commercial hit in America, classy Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) is playing the remake card, transferring a Tokyo-set suspense yarn by the Japanese master of cerebral spookiness Hideo Nakata (Ringu, later remade as The Ring) to the United States.

Sure enough, there are direct similarities between The Ring and Dark Water. Both deal with the effects of emotional scars, the potential death of a young child and links with ghostly apparitions. Oh, and they both want to scare the heck out of us.

Although it is relatively easy, Salles shows that he is up to the task of creeping us out for most of the movie's two hours. Something very peculiar is happening at the shabby apartment house that Dahlia and her sullen 6-year-old daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade, in a role that would have gone to Dakota Fanning a few years ago) move into, perhaps far more nefarious than the ever-expanding ceiling leak and the brown, brackish water that spurts out from the sink.

After all, Dahlia's nerves were already frayed, long before she met apartment-manager-from-hell John C. Reilly or eccentric building superintendant Pete Postlethwaite. It is hard to tell how many of the strange events she observes are really the hallucinations of a woman who has been popping pills for her nerves with increased frequency. And speaking of hallucinations, what's with Ceci's sudden adoption of an imaginary friend named Natasha who talks to her through the ceiling hole from the apartment above?

Although The Ring is certainly an influence on him, Salles is also evoking Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, with its is-she-crazy-or-is-someone-plotting-something-really-evil? narrative. And if there's no one in the allegedly vacant apartment above Dahlia's, why are there so many point-of-view shots from that dripping ceiling?

Connelly, who also had real estate issues in House of Sand and Fog, conveys just the right air of frayed fragility to get us caring and empathizing.

Gade (Ben Stiller's daughter in Envy) has terrific saucer-shaped, haunted eyes, Reilly is both unctuous and devious as the rental agent and Tim Roth is first-rate as Dahlia's lawyer, who digs for the truth about her situation, but is not very forthcoming himself.

All Dark Water really needs is a tight, conclusive punch line that ties up what we have seen with an explanation that is satisfying. And that is precisely what the movie lacks.