Cinecast Mailbag (7/14)

Not Dark Enough: I'd like to start out by saying that you guys said that Dark Water had no false scares. That's because the film had no scares. I completely hated this film and was very close to asking for a refund after seeing this troubling film. My biggest problem, other than the lack of scares, was the character development. I felt like I never got to know these characters, despite the insane amount of time they spent on character development. I feel that in order for this film to be truly scary, you have to care about the characters and the writing and direction never really got me there. I was more interested in how much popcorn I had left than what was actually going on. The characters are flat and one dimensional, despite little details about the lawyer not having a family. I felt like sometimes they were trying to be subtle, but they weren't obvious enough. Other times, I felt like they were trying to beat us with the same tidbits of background about these characters repeatedly.

And what was up with the film's score? It was worse than cliche, it was cheesy and ruined any possible scares this film had. The only positive I have about the film is the acting by Tim Roth. You guys mention teenagers walking out and I feel that I should have done the same, but I refuse to walk out of a movie unless I drunkenly walked into a Uwe Boll flick. I'd also like to say that despite the film sucking, I enjoyed Fantastic Four far more than Dark Water.

Alex Love

Thanks for the email, Alex. You weren't the only listener to disagree with our assessment of "Dark Water" -- a film I didn't even want to see when I first caught the trailer for it. You didn't feel like you ever truly got to know the characters -- not enough to empathize with them, anyway -- whereas I felt like I knew everything I needed to know about Jennifer Connelly's Dahlia within the first 10 minutes of the film (a testament to the writing, directing and acting). We just got snippets of insight into her failed marriage, her traumatic upbringing, etc... but that was enough for me to make a connection. And I certainly don't agree that all of the characters are one-dimensional. With the possible exception of John C. Reilly's character -- who does have some texture in that he's one of the nicest scumbags you could ever meet -- I thought there were layers to everyone. For example, you couldn't just write off the husband (Dougray Scott) as an uncaring jerk because you got a real sense of how difficult it must have been to love someone as troubled as Dahlia; plus, you could tell he genuinely cared for his daughter.

I'm intrigued by your comments about the music because, frankly, I never noticed even one note of it -- which is the highest compliment I can pay to a score. It never got in the way, never distracted me. I'll have to listen closer when the film comes out on DVD.

Adam