If you've ever wondered about the stigma faced by divorced mothers in Japan, 2002's Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から) is a good illustration. And a pretty good horror movie to boot.
Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki) is in the midst of her divorce and is fighting for custody of her little girl, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). Her nerves are raw all the time. In addition to having to prove herself constantly, she happens to be an especially sensitive woman who once had to go to therapy to deal with trauma from proofreading manuscripts for horror novels. Having been in therapy, of course, is a strike against her.
She and Ikuko move into a new apartment in which it soon becomes apparent that a water stain on the ceiling is growing and frequently drips water. There's also a little red child's bag that repeatedly turns up and may have belonged to a child who went missing. Yoshimi starts to think she catches glimpses of the missing girl.
She reports the water stain to the building manager but he won't lift a finger beyond noting it in his log. Does he not believe her? She doesn't seem very stable. At this point, the viewer is challenged to wonder if she's imagining everything. How reasonable are the people who dismiss her claims out of hand? How reasonable are the people who say that she's late picking her daughter up from school every day? She claims she's not late every day, only some days, due to work. Is she telling the truth? Does she know the truth?
Although the movie remains within her point of view, it makes the viewer complicit in doubting her. It wouldn't be the first movie that presented its story through an unreliable narrator. This narrative is a balancing act that finally resolves in a way I found satisfyingly creepy and psychologically evocative.
Dark Water is available on The Criterion Channel.
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