Movies - Dark Water

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	Movies - Dark Water

Dark Water is the English title of a book by Koji Suzuki, originally published in Japan as Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Kanji: 仄暗い水の底から; literally, In the Depths of Dark Water). The book is a collection of short stories, first published in 1996, and released in an English translation in 2004..

The collection contains seven stories, and an extra plotline forming the prologue and epilogue.

Stories

Floating Water (浮遊する水; Fuyū Suru Mizu) - the inspiration for the film Dark Water by Hideo Nakata
, and its US remake
by Walter Salles. It is the story of a young mother and her daughter who take refuge from a messy divorce in a run-down apartment building. The mother discovers that a small girl vanished from the building a year previously, and begins to investigate the connection between her disappearance and a series of terrifying events taking place around the flat. Both the Japanese film
and the American remake
are quite close to the chapter.

Solitary Isle - a young man sets out to discover the truth behind his dead friend's boast that he dumped his girlfriend naked on an island in the middle of Tokyo bay.

The Hold - a fisherman who beats his wife and son tries to uncover the reason bvehind his wife's disappearance, and why he has a throbbing headache.

Dream Cruise - a young man is invited out on a mini-cruise by a couple who wish to entice him into a pyramid sales scheme. Fairly soon, bizarre things start happening to the boat.

Adrift - the crew of a fishing trawler happen across an abandoned yacht, similar in situation to the Marie Celeste. The film rights for this story have been optioned.

Watercolors - an amateur dramatic troupe stage a play in a converted disco, but strange things start happening on the floor above.

Forest Under The Sea - the only story in the collection to have no real supernatural element whatsoever. Two spelunkers discover an unexplored cave, but become trapped. Suzuki here explores the emotions of regret and longing. It ties in with the epilogue story.

Themes

It would be an inaccuracy to describe the collection as a book of 'horror' stories, as Suzuki places very little emphasis on the supernatural aspects of the plots, although there are those aspects, to be sure. He is more concerned with the atrocities committed by humans themselves rather than by otherworldly forces. There are themes of urban decay, family troubles and domestic abuse running throughout the stories. The characters themselves are often selfish, cruel and self-absorbed. Suzuki uses these characters to explore emotions such as rage, fear and longing. His stories often take as their theme life after the Japanese economic bubble burst, as they were written shortly after that period.

The one thing that all the stories have in common is the repeated use of water imagery. Many of the events take place at sea, but even the land-based plotlines have a connection to water. In Floating Water and Watercolors, for instance, the characters are plagued by water dripping through their ceiling.

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