Dark Water

Yoshimi Matsubara is going through a difficult divorce and fighting for custody of her young daughter, Ikuko. The two move into a gloomy apartment building on the outskirts of the city, where Yoshimi hopes to rebuild their life. Soon after settling in, she notices a stain spreading across her bedroom ceiling. The building's caretaker shows little interest in the problem, and the drip above her bed grows steadily worse, while a small red bag keeps turning up in the corridors and strange sounds carry down from the roof. Yoshimi comes to suspect a connection between these events and a girl who vanished from the building under mysterious circumstances.

The film is a Japanese horror mystery directed by Hideo Nakata, his fourth feature in the chronological order of his eighteen directing credits, following Ring 2 and preceding The Ring Two. Takashige Ichise produced and co-wrote the screenplay with Nakata and Yoshihiro Nakamura. Hitomi Kuroki leads the cast as Yoshimi, with Rio Kanno as the young Ikuko, Mirei Oguchi as Mitsuko Kawai, Asami Mizukawa as the older Ikuko, Fumiyo Kohinata as Kunio Hamada and Yuu Tokui as Ota, among twenty-two credited performers.

Made for a budget of four million dollars, the film earned around two million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7 from roughly thirty-seven thousand votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.8 from several hundred votes. A critics' rating of 6.8 from nineteen reviews places it close to the audience scores.