Dark Wave

Fri/18-Sun/20, Roxie Cinema

THIS YEAR'S EDITION of the Halloween fear fest Dark Wave contains Dark Water, and the brand-new inferior Hollywood remake of Ring means now is the ideal time to check out the latest movie by the original's director, Hideo Nakata. Dark Water reconfigures the fright factor of Nakata's signature motifs: trading Ring's well for a water tank, it once again makes a ghost girl the locus of pathos-soaked terror. Nakata transforms details that seem either depressingly ordinary (a ceiling water stain, recalling the wall smudges in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse) or downright cutesy (a child's red vinyl Sanrio-knockoff bag) into symbols of dread. The final result isn't as overtly scary as Ring, but for the first 80 or so of Dark Water's 101 minutes, Nakata plumbs newfound psychological depths. Before it shifts into genre clichés, the movie is an unnerving and moving character study of a divorced mother (Hitomi Kuroki) fighting for custody of her child (Rio Kanno) in a contemporary Japan more inclined to condemn than help her. Kuroki's performance and Nakata's precise, stark, concise symbolism tap into societal unease (in particular, antifemale work and familial structures) and subconscious insecurities with nightmare-inducing potency. For a while Dark Water provides a parent-focused flip side of the shattered mother-daughter portrait in Akihiko Shiota's superb (and shamefully undistributed) Harmful Insect. Dark Wave's other features include Teenage Hooker Became a Killing Machine in Daehakroh (a digi-vid South Korean Frankenhooker with a style-hopping soundtrack featuring arias from Saint-Saens's Samson and Delila) and the Scottish werewolf war tale Dog Soldiers (soon to have its own run at the Roxie). Not available for preview, but probably worth exploring, is Ryuhei Kitamura's Versus. Kitamura's follow-up, Alive – starring Ryo (Gemini, Distance, Harmful Insect), one of the strangest presences in contemporary film – received raves at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Versus's futurist yakuza-zombie hybrid was equally praised at last year's fest. See Rep Clock for schedule. (Johnny Ray Huston)