Page 103 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

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earlier. From the exterior, the building appears even more dilapidated
than in previous external shots; the interior of her mother’s apartment,
however, appears virtually unchanged, as if time has stood still within its
modestly decorated walls. Yoshimi does not seem to be home, and so
Ikuko quietly looks around, finally picking up a photograph in a silver
frame from her mother’s bedside table and studying it for several
seconds. Ikuko pauses as she is about to leave, then turns to find her
mother standing several feet behind her. Ikuko and her mother reminisce.
We learn not only that Ikuko has been living with her father, but that the
father has remarried and now has children by his second wife. Ikuko also
reveals that she had no idea that her mother was still living in the
apartment and, kneeling before her, asks if they can live together once
more. Yoshimi sadly apologises to Ikuko, stating that living together
would be impossible. Nakata then presents us with a powerful medium
shot of Ikuko on the right side of the frame and, behind her, the blurry
image of Mitsuko in her yellow rain slicker. Ikuko spins around quickly
to catch a glimpse of Mitsuko, but there is no one there. When she turns
back to her mother, Yoshimi, too, has vanished. In the film’s closing shot,
we see a very long shot of Ikuko walking away from the decaying
apartment building that looms huge and menacing behind her. The sky
above, however, is blue and free of clouds for the first time in the entire
film.
Dark Water’s closing moments are filled with ghosts. However,
conspicuously absent, save for the shot of Ikuko and Mitsuko described
above, is the mood of fear and dread that saturates the majority of the
film. Nakata eschews the chiaroscuro lighting effects and ominous music
generously employed throughout the film’s previous eighty-plus minutes
to evoke fear in the spectator in favor of a brighter, though by no means
intensely lit, mise-en-scène and a softer, melancholy piano score.
Although ten years has passed, Yoshimi appears not to have aged at all;
even the apartment’s seemingly unchanged décor suggests an uncanny
timelessness within the apartment’s walls. Yoshimi’s decision to become
Mitsuko’s surrogate mother despite the presence of her own biological
child represents one potential, if ultimately limited, approach to breaking
the cycle of individual and cultural anxiety accompanying both the