Here is the thing. If there is a well-made Japanese horror movie, maybe it should stay a well-made Japanese horror movie because outside of the first Ring, the American remakes (The Ring Two, The Grudge) just don't work. You can add Dark Water to that list.

Jennifer Connelly plays Dahlia, a woman divorcing her cad-of-a-cheating-husband (Dougray Scott). She's trying to establish herself as a single mom with her cute-as-a-button little girl Ceci (Ariel Gade). She needs an affordable apartment near a good school and she gets stuck in a place on Roosevelt Island (near Manhattan) that looks one step above public housing. As they settle in, they notice a strange dark water leaking in the bedroom. This is strange considering that the apartment upstairs has been abandoned. No one knows exactly what happened with the tenants (did they move? Did the parents split up? Who took the little girl?). As the weeks progress, the water gets worse, and slumlord owner (John C. Reilly) and his porn-watching handyman (Pete Postlethwaite) are reluctant to do anything about it. But as the water worsens, so does little Ceci's mental state. Her parents and her teacher (Camryn Manheim) are concerned about Ceci's new imaginary friend, Natasha (Perla Haney-Jardine). Coincidentally, Natasha is also the name of the missing upstairs neighbor girl, who coincidentally looks a lot like Ceci and happens, coincidentally to be the same age.

Back in the day, the ghost of children were friendly. Remember Casper? Nowadays, they seem behave more like little Reagan from The Exorcist. Connelly is a great actress and she's great here but the movie never really gets started. By the time it does, no one really cares. It's a scary movie completely devoid of anything remotely close to thrills or chills. The same guy who wrote The Ring, Hideo Nakata, wrote Dark Water and he's treading on  familiar territory - the single mother who's up against the evil dead child in search of a mommy.

Despite Connelly's strong performance and an equally strong performance from Ariel Gade, Dark Water drowns in its own tedium.