Pour That Concrete!
I was feeling a bit worked up about my personal life, so I went to see “Dark Water.” This film, starring Jennifer Connelly along with a fat-faced child with pupilless black eyes and the little girl from “Kill Bill, Vol. 2,” is a searing indictment of the 1960s Brutalist school of architecture and social utopianism. I got married in Boston City Hall, so I care about this stuff. As usual, I had a few questions, like:
(Also as usual, spoilers follow.)
Why does apartment 10F look like it was last occupied in 1973? This was awesome visually, but it doesn't make sense, since Natasha was abandoned recently enough to have been carrying a pristine-condition Hello Kitty backpack.
Why didn't Natasha bloat up if she was floating in the water tank for at least a month?
If Kyle was indeed gaslighting Dahlia (I must say the character names in this movie were slightly more creative than usual) by paying sullen white teenagers to leer at her, does he really deserve custody of little Ceci at the end?
Mightn't it have been better to use two little girls who didn't look quite so alike? You really had to peer to distinguish them, which was too bad, since there are supposed to be moments of great shock when Natasha takes Ceci's place.
Why are little girl ghosts so goddamn mean?
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The movie had several consecutive endings, as though it were in a fight to the death with itself. It leaned on the creepy music, and when I went outside, the world seemed strangely quiet. But that was probably because the Red Sox were in Baltimore.
I do worry about Perla Haney-Jardine. She has now had both Uma Thurman and Jennifer Connelly as screen mothers, which I suppose is worth just about any amount of psychological damage (I'm just kidding, sweetie, you're going to be fine). Really though, letting your kid appear in "Kill Bill" is one thing-that's art, man. But "Dark Water"? What kind of a childhood experience is that? If they are truly interested in acting, and trying to do it sincerely, aren't these kids (Ariel Gade was the black-eyed one) going to be a little traumatized by having worked on horror films? Just a thought.