Nual's mother died when Nual was just a baby and it is said that Nual's mother, Chan, was raped and drowned in the cursed river by the village. Now, the village is a haven for thieves and crooks and the ghost of Chan is doing the best she can to kill them off. Meanwhile, Nual meets a handsome young man named Sak who she quickly falls in love with, but this makes her friend Sapin very upset. Drama breaks out between the two friends and soon the village is completely absorbed by intrigues, vengeful spirits and crimes.
What do you do when you've made a really lousy horror flick and spent a fair amount of money on it? Simple! You simply steal the title from a successful Japanese horror flick that everybody loved. Unfortunately for Right Beyond Entertainment (a Thai company known for releasing crappy movies), the Thai audience wasn't fooled and the movie bombed at the box office (it only survived a week before the cinemas stopped playing it). After just having seen the brilliant horror movie "Exte", Dark Water, which has a somewhat similar concept where long black hair is the main villain, feels like quite the dud. The special effects are far from as stunning (they look like they were made in Photoshop), the story is less than intriguing and the movie overall feels cheap (even though it probably wasn't).Before I go on with my negative review, I have to say that I actually did learn a couple of things from this terrible horror movie; 1. When you spot a ghost on the shore, make sure to jump in the water - and even more so if you're in a boat.2. Hair moves like a tentacle when under water.3. Exorcists borrow demons from the original Doom game and use them as pets.4. Women are unable to do anything but to cry and cause drama and jealousy.5. Monks are easily frightened.6. Small towns in Thailand are extremely violent.I think that's it. So let's get on with the review shall we? The movie revolves around Nual whose mother, Chan, died when she was only a baby. Chan has now become a powerful ghost and likes to kill people by splashing water over them or drown them with her ridiculously long hair. Despite all of this, Nual still visits her shrine every day to pay respect to her dead mother and even though she has no memory of her - she still misses her. She soon meets a young man named Sak who she quickly falls in love with. This makes her best friend, Sapin, very jealous so Sapin decides to team up with a bunch of the local crooks to stop them from marrying each other.Once again we get a horror movie which is all drama and no horror. The horror really is just a weak subplot of the movie. Dark Water is obviously trying to rip off the successful Thai horror flick "Nang Nak" but is unsuccessful at doing so as the characters are flat and the acting is terrible. I also hated how it portrayed women as the weaker sex - I think we got to hear random men saying "you're just a woman, what can you do?" more than five times throughout this movie. It's strange how Thailand seems to be divided into two very different cultures. One which is very modern and one which is stuck in the middle of the 20th century - if that. The plot is excruciatingly dull and repetitive and it all seemed like a rush job to me. The script is weak and it's obvious that this didn't have a budget as big as most other Thai horror flicks as it looked and felt like a DTV movie. So when I say that this probably cost a decent amount of money to make, I really mean in comparison to other Right Beyond titles as they usually only do release straight to video movies (that are painfully bad). I don't have a whole lot good to say about this movie as you've probably noticed. It's got a thin story and I've never been very frightened of ghosts that have a personality and... errr... a flying head (what's up with all these flying head ghosts?). Dark Water only proves my theory that not everyone can make a movie about killer hair good - on the contrary, very few actually can. This movie belongs deep down at the bottom of the ocean - so maybe that's what the title is trying to describe.
