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 Dark Water Production NotesDark water conceals darker secrets.
Nothing is more terrifying than to realize your home, your family, your neighborhood, the very walls and ceilings that surround you have turned against you. When there is no safety to be found in what is supposed to be the very safest of places, the deepest form of psychological fear abounds. This theme has wended its way through some of the most unsettling and sophisticated horror-thrillers in movie history.
From the kindly-seeming next-door neighbors secretly practicing satanic rituals in “Rosemary's Baby” to the idyllic retreat which dissolves into family madness in “The Shining” to the lonely little boy who finds apparitions of the dead in urban hallways in “The Sixth Sense”-the idea of “home sweet home” becoming unbearably haunted has long fired the artistic imagination.
Now, DARK WATER continues in this classic tradition of smart, stylish, emotionally charged and thought-provoking terror driven by the complex performances of a highly accomplished cast of actors. Acclaimed director Walter Salles (“Central Station,” “The Motorcycle Diaries”) joins the ranks of Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, M. Night Shyamalan and Alejandro Amenebar in exploring the mind-bending, heart-stopping territory where everyday reality encounters the darkest supernatural mysteries. Based on a story by the author of the horror classic “The Ring,” DARK WATER approaches modern domestic anxiety from an original angle: that of a devoted mother who will go to unimaginable lengths to protect her daughter from an apartment that threatens to literally unleash a torrent of fury.
It all begins inside Apartment 9F. This is where a single mother, Dahlia Williams (Academy Award® winner Jennifer Connelly), is trying to make a brand-new start in life. Attempting to escape from a bitter custody battle with her estranged husband, Dahlia moves with her daughter Ceci to a dilapidated, sprawling housing block on Roosevelt Island at the very edges of New York City. Their new home provides little refuge. The rundown tower's creepy noises, rickety elevator and sinister dark water stains are eerie enough. But Dahlia soon begins to suspect there is a far greater threat.
DELUGE BEGINS
Just who or what is it that is playing mind games with Dahlia-and can she trust her own senses when her imagination is also running wild? As Ceci's ghostly encounters and an array of strange occurrences continue to build, Dahlia suddenly must question who she can trust and in what she can believe. But she will stop at nothing to figure out the riddle and protect her daughter…even as the dark water closes in around them. A world of familiar household objects, moods and emotions is transformed into a realm of relentless menace and dread in DARK WATER as the mystery unfolds.
DARK WATER marks the Hollywood debut of acclaimed Brazilian director Walter Salles, who was an Academy Award nominee for “Central Station.” Rafael Yglesias wrote the screenplay. The film is produced by Bill Mechanic, Roy Lee and Doug Davison. Ashley Kramer is the executive producer; Diana Pokorny is the co-producer. DARK WATER unites a stellar cast headed by Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly in a role that pushes a mother's heart-wrenching devotion to its very edges. Supporting Connelly in her journey into the center of fear are memorable characters portrayed by Dougray Scott and Camryn Manheim, along with Academy Award nominees John C. Reilly, Tim Roth and Pete Postlethwaite.
The creative team working with Walter Salles to craft the film's atmosphere of trepidation and suspense includes cinematographer Affonso Beato (“Dot The I,” “All About My Mother”); production designer Therese DePrez (“American Splendor”); Academy Award®-nominated editor Daniel Rezende (“City of God,” “The Motorcycle Diaries”); costume designer Michael Wilkinson (“American Splendor”); and Golden Globe®-nominated composer Angelo Badalamenti (“Mulholland Drive”).
Moving In: A Script That Probes Unspoken Fears
A chilling tale of psychological terror that probes unsettling questions about where we live, who we can trust and the things that we fear the most, DARK WATER revisits anew an original Japanese short story by highly regarded horror writer Koji Suzuki, which was in turn the inspiration for an influential Japanese feature film directed by Hideo Nakata.
Suzuki and Nakata are perhaps best known for another explosive work of spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat psychological suspense-“The Ring”-which became one of the most talked-about international horror-thriller films ever in the version directed by Nakata and later went on to become a critically acclaimed hit in its Hollywood remake starring Naomi Watts. But while “The Ring” focused on an accursed videotape that threatened death to all who watched it, DARK WATER draws the wages of fear much closer to everyday adult reality with its story of a modern single mother and an urban apartment that seems to literally be bursting at the seams with memories and malevolence.
Nakata's Japanese version of DARK WATER came several years after “The Ring” and was hailed as one of his greatest works as well as the very height of the Japanese horror film experience-at once richly emotional, psychologically complex and unremittingly rife with tension.
It was the unforgettably scary experience of watching Nakata's film that first attracted producers Bill Mechanic, Roy Lee and Doug Davison to the idea of bringing the story to a wider American audience. Says Mechanic: “The film was simultaneously smart and terrifying-and it immediately brought to mind classic thrillers like `Rosemary's Baby' and `The Shining.' There was also something very universal about it-the suspense was wrapped around themes of abandonment and isolation that we thought American audiences would really relate to on a gut level. I was so impressed, I bought the rights within five minutes of seeing the film.”
Now, the question became how to approach the horror story in a whole new way to embody a realistic New York City setting and distinctively American characters and themes-all while still keeping the mystery and anxiety cranked up to maximum levels. To accomplish this, the producers brought in highly regarded screenwriter Rafael Yglesias, who had never written in the horror-thriller genre before but whose human and psychological insights have graced screenplays for such films as Peter Weir's “Fearless” and Roman Polanski's “Death and the Maiden.”
It was the opportunity to explore the anatomy of fear in its deepest, darkest domestic crevices that drew Yglesias to the project. “I have always wanted to write a ghost story and this was a chance to create a very American ghost story,” he says. “In the U.S., our ghosts are unique in that I believe they always have some kind of unfulfilled needs, something they hunger for without end. In our story, this all-consuming need is the desire for a loving mother. Ultimately, it's what unites Dahlia and the ghost who is haunting her, which makes for a very intriguing and frightening proposition.”
He continues: “The fear in the film really is driven by this sense of claustrophobia and isolation inside Dahlia. It's the kind of terror that comes from inside your mind, the scariest of all.”
The producers were thrilled with Yglesias' probing psychological approach, which seemed to make the material completely fresh and unique to American culture. “Rafael took this Japanese story and brought an entirely American sensibility to it, while turning the tale of this haunted family into something even more evocative and mysterious,” notes executive producer Ashley Kramer. “He transformed the more passive Japanese heroine of the original into a very poignant and relatable American single mom trapped in a personal dilemma, creating a very strong and memorable female character that we knew would make for a compelling core of the film.”
The script's compelling narrative also riveted the attention of director Walter Salles who, at first, seemed to be a highly unexpected choice to tackle a story of a haunted apartment. Having come to the fore with the award-winning Latin American films “Central Station,” “Behind the Sun” and most recently the acclaimed “Motorcycle Diaries” as well as producing the Brazilian tour de force “City of God,” Salles is known for his strong human subjects and cinematic artistry. But he has also been noted for an extraordinary visual energy, and it was this powerful combination that drew the producers to approach him for DARK WATER.
Adds Bill Mechanic: “Right from the start, Walter understood the very depths of these characters and was committed to grounding the film in reality. He had a very personal connection to the story's themes. In both `Central Station' and `Behind the Sun,' he uses the relationship between a child and parent, or surrogate parent, as a unifying device. I felt that if he brought that to our script-that true-to-life quality of an indelible mother-daughter bond between Dahlia and Ceci-then the movie would be even more frightening because it would be that much more real.”
The producers also discovered to their delight that Salles had long been a horror-movie aficionado. Ashley Kramer recalls: “Walter told us that growing up, he'd lived for a while in Paris above a screening room where they screened a lot of Polanski and other filmmakers doing sophisticated horror. He told us that he'd always wanted to do a psychological horror movie, and when he began talking to us, there was no question that he was going to lift this movie above the genre. Right from the start, he had a full-fledged vision of how he wanted the film to look-of how the visuals of the movie would combine to subtly give you more and more a feeling of being claustrophobic, more and more a feeling of being vulnerable, and more and more a feeling of losing control.”
Hearing Noises: Walter Salles Takes On The Haunting Theme Of Alienation
At the heart of DARK WATER's spiraling suspense is something very primal: the human urge to explain the inexplicable. It was this underlying theme that most drew director Walter Salles to the story. “I'm attracted by the unknown, by the unexplainable,” he says. “I think we're all in the same position of being in this world that we can't quite decode completely-and those things in life that we can't explain or resolve make for very interesting subjects for film. I think, more than anything else, DARK WATER is about those inner demons we carry with us but cannot quite see, and also the mystery of urban solitude- the way we often feel so remote and beyond communication even when we are surrounded by a big city full of people.”
Though DARK WATER marks his first foray into mystery and horror, Walter Salles has long been fascinated with the cinematic exploration of fear-and especially admires the master directors who blazed the trail before him. “I've always been interested in the early films of Roman Polanski and other New Wave directors that deal with the most primal questions of mortality, of urban alienation, of abandonment and solitude,” he says. “What has always been most interesting about ghost stories to me is that they bring into question our own human limits and our desire to believe that after the end of our lives, there is more than just oblivion.”
He continues: “So when I read Rafael Yglesias' script I was quite taken with how it seemed to rise above the horror genre much like those early Polanski films. I like films that go beyond genre, that seem to pertain to a genre yet take you somewhere else, and this story seemed to do that. I was touched by the characters and especially by the mother-daughter relationship that is the very core of the story. And I saw it very much as a story about loss and how it can be transcended.”
In exploring the nature of fear as a primal human emotion, Salles put his emphasis on the idea that the most unshakable chills and surprises are generated more from inside the mind- where our own personal demons and childhood terrors still lurk-rather than from more obvious external events. “I feel that many recent horror films are simply too direct in their approach,” observes Salles. “I'm more interested in the kind of film where what you feel is more important than what you hear and what you see, where things aren't overexplained, and questions are left hanging.”
In addition to citing Polanski, Kubrick and Hitchcock as influences, Salles was also knowledgeable about Japanese horror films before he took on DARK WATER. Having made a Brazilian documentary on the conflict between tradition and modernity in Japan, he had a firsthand introduction to the work of directors such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa or Hideo Nakata. “This new wave of Japanese horror films, influenced by Alfred Hitchcock and Theodore Dreyer, have been exploring some very interesting themes.”
One of those themes is a key element that can be found at the heart of many of cinema's most potent horror-thrillers: the theme of childhood and the child's ability to be both more accepting and fearless than adults even when faced with the most horrifying and inexplicable of mysteries. Says Salles: “Every single character in DARK WATER has psychological barriers that prevent them from moving forward, from transcending their surroundings- everyone except for young Ceci. A child doesn't have those imprints from a whole life, that sense of limits and barriers that comes with growing up. There are no social impositions that have crystallized yet, so they are much more accepting, much more free than the average adult. Yet the one thing children do seem to have is an innate sense of justice, of what is fair and what is not.”
Salles summarizes: “I see the child in this film as really being the moral center. She accepts things that nobody else accepts. She sees things that nobody else sees. In a sense, she does what an artist is supposed to do in the world: bring to light the things that others don't see.”
Tracing Water Stains: Academy Award® Winner Jennifer Connelly Dives Into The Darkest Depths Of Maternal Love And Protection
To truly bring DARK WATER to life, Walter Salles knew it would all hinge on the actress who plays Dahlia, a fiercely protective young mother trying to raise her daughter in safety despite an angry ex-husband and a deeply alienating urban world that threatens to upend them. Even when Dahlia thinks she has done everything possible to keep her daughter from harm- whisking her off to an isolated and anonymous apartment building on New York's Roosevelt Island-comes a series of strange and disturbing events that will put them in a kind of danger that is beyond her imagining, forcing her to question the very reality around her.
Salles knew he would need an actress capable of swinging across a pendulum of emotions-from unceasing maternal love to uncertain despair to petrified shock-and also someone earthy, intelligent and very real; that is, the last type of person one would expect to ever come to believe in the supernatural.
In searching for a woman with the sophistication to accomplish all this, the filmmakers arrived at
Jennifer Connelly, who won the Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the wife of a brilliant but disturbed mathematician in “A Beautiful Mind.” Salles had been especially impressed with Connelly's intense and terrifying performance as a drug addict in Darren Aranofsky's “Requiem for a Dream,” but there was another reason the actress proved perfect for the role. Connelly not only possessed the consummate acting skills and strong personality required but had a six-month-old child at the time, heightening her maternal instincts to palpable levels.
“Walter felt it was very important to have a mother play Dahlia-he felt it was essential that we find an actress who could understand in her soul that bond between mother and child, and this quality really shows in Jennifer's powerful performance,” says Ashley Kramer.
Jennifer Connelly was intrigued by the mystery and complexity of the story but admits she did have a little trepidation about entering such nightmare-inducing territory. “I have always been very affected by horror stories and am a little afraid of them,” she comments. “But this story, being about a woman trying to make a new life for herself and her daughter in the middle of some very strange circumstances, was really moving to me. I was fascinated by the combination of a story that could be so frightening and yet so emotionally provocative at the same time.”WATER STAINS
She continues: “I really related to Dahlia-maybe not the supernatural things that happen to her in the apartment, but the hopes and fears she has about raising her daughter. It's interesting to me how these little things that start as everyday annoyances, like a leaky ceiling, turn into something so terribly huge and scary. Reality and nightmares start to merge. After all, it is a truly frightening thing to end a marriage and go out into the world and try to start your life all over again in a new city-and that's very real-but then Dahlia descends into something even more frightening and surreal.”
Connelly was especially drawn to Walter Salles' stylish and psychological approach to the film. “He has such an elegant way of coming at the terror of the story,” she observes. “He gives the story a lot of grace and mystery. What's great about it is that with almost everything that happens in the film, you question whether it's happening in Dahlia's mind or in reality. Is she simply unraveling under all the stress of the divorce, of moving, of trying to be a good mother? Is she succumbing to her own old fears of abandonment from her own complicated childhood? Or is she truly in danger from some powerful supernatural force that wants something from her? It's up to you to decide.”
In addition to the high-wire tension and emotional challenges of playing Dahlia, Connelly also had to spend a good portion of the climactic scenes drenched in the gruesome, brackish water that overtakes Dahlia's apartment. This required fortitude. “It was wintertime and we were shooting in this cold building in wet clothing-and I would have to run from the set to the hot tub to warm up,” recalls Connelly. “But along with the story and the sets and the photography, even this seemed to contribute to the atmosphere of being chilled to the bone.”
For Walter Salles, Connelly's performance went a long way towards realizing his genretranscending vision for the film. “Jennifer is one of the most talented and sensitive actors I have ever worked with. She offered us a character that is not only complex and layered but also filled with integrity and honesty,” he says. “I'm not a big fan of the larger-than-life in acting and Jennifer is precisely the opposite of that; she can produce a very large impact with the most subtle of actions. It is something that unites all her work and, I think, is also a part of Dahlia-but here she was, very courageous and willing to jump into areas that are painful to explore. There were so many things that she did that were so tender and so delicate, I didn't even notice them in the moment but only later when we were putting the film together.”
With Connelly cast, the hunt began for a young actress to play Ceci, Dahlia's five-year-old daughter who, at first, takes in stride the strange apparitions she sees as her mother becomes unhinged in their eerie new apartment. Casting director Mali Finn mounted an extensive search for a five-year-old actress capable of taking on both the physical and emotional demands of the role, looking at over 1,000 young hopefuls on tape and in person. Eventually, the search was narrowed down to two equally mature and intriguing young girls, Ariel Gade and Perla Haney-Jardine. They both ended up in the movie: Gade was cast in the role of Ceci, and Haney-Jardine as the ghostly Natasha, who mysteriously disappears from the apartment above.
For six-year-old Ariel Gade, the character of Ceci was just the kind of person she admires- strong and fearless. “I like Ceci a lot because she is really a brave little girl,” says the young actress. “She isn't afraid of anything even though what's happening to her is very scary. At least, I think it's scary-but Ceci is used to scary things.”
Salles believes the key to working with both the child actresses was building trust. “There was a very protective atmosphere on the set that I think gave both Ariel and Perla, who are each very talented, the confidence to fully develop their potential,” he says.
Gade, who had to face ghosts, inner demons and even a drowning scene in her performance, impressed the adult cast with her total commitment to the role. Says Jennifer Connelly: “Ariel is just the sweetest, loveliest little girl but she also worked very, very hard on this movie. She was always excited to do another scene, no matter how tough it was, and that was something that really inspired the rest of us. She and I had such a great time together on the set and-especially because I have a son about the same age-I felt like we developed a very natural mother-daughter relationship.”
Seeing Ghostly Visions: Haunting The Imagination Through The Film's Design
While the actors' performances were key to generating the psychological fear at the heart of DARK WATER, there remained another equally essential element to bring to life: the Roosevelt Island apartment building itself, with its frightening, water-logged secrets of the past. Director Walter Salles wanted to assure that the audience would viscerally feel the dampness, the darkness and the mounting anxiety of Dahlia's new environment as an omnipresent force from the minute they settled into their seats.
The first task for the filmmaking crew was journeying to Roosevelt Island, where Dahlia and Ceci retreat to make their new home in Apartment 9F. Roosevelt Island is a two-mile-long strip of land in the East River of New York City which, despite its remote location, is considered a part of Manhattan. Once known as Welfare Island-a depository for the sick, the mentally ill and the criminally sentenced-for years, the island's main buildings were primarily hospitals and asylums. Later, the island became home to a number of sprawling, high-rise apartment projects, several completed in what is known in the architectural world as the “Brutalist Style,” consisting of massive, faceless, post-modern, concrete monoliths.
The island's mix of being another world unto itself, and yet part of Manhattan, as well as its water-bound location, made it the perfect setting for DARK WATER's themes of alienation and torrential rages.
“Someone once said to me that when you're driving on East River Drive in the rain and the fog and you look over at Roosevelt Island, it almost looks as though it's a way station between this world and the next,” notes DARK WATER screenwriter Rafael Yglesias, who is a native New Yorker. “That was the feeling Walter wanted to capture in the filming.”
When Walter Salles first saw Roosevelt Island he too knew the location was custom-made for what he hoped to achieve. “I was really moved by the geography-it was very unique, and it reminded me oddly of places I have seen in Eastern Europe,” he says. “There is a sense of repetitive, industrial spaces that emphasizes a kind of loss of identity. From the minute I arrived there, I really began to understand the correlation between the island's geography and film's visual tone.”
“Coming from a documentary background, reality has always been very important to me,” notes Salles. “Yet Therese DePrez managed somehow, miraculously, to transfer what I had felt on the real Roosevelt Island to the soundstage and bring these places to life. I also came to feel that working inside four walls pushes you to be very creative with the camera.”
DePrez collaborated closely with Salles on the intricate details of the interiors and the film's color schematics. She found particular inspiration in the works of several mood-driven artists, including the midcentury realist Lucien Freud and contemporary New York painter Alice Neil, for the film's disquieting palette of muted earth tones and watery greens, greys and blacks. By using such unexpected colors, she attempted to make Roosevelt Island even more its own private world, much the way the Dakota apartment building becomes its own microcosmic universe in “Rosemary's Baby.”
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Ariel Gade, Jennifer Connelly in Dark Water.
