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On the Dark Side
By David Fear
Time Out
June 30/July 6, 2005
Brooklynite A-lister Jennifer Connelly takes another stab at the horror genre with Dark water
Audiences never tire of seeing a damsel in distress fend off some unspeakable terror - a homicidal maniac, a demonic spirit, a mutant alien shark whose fins can work a chain saw. But spending two hours spilling your popcorn from fright is even more alluring when the heroine happens to be drop-dead gorgeous and adept at communicating an unmentionable dread. This is where Jennifer Connelly comes in.
In Dark Water, a July8 release that's Hollywood's latest remake of a modern Japanese- horror classic, Connelly plays a young divorcée who moves across the river from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island with her five -year-old daughter, Cecilia. Thanks to unctuous broker ( John C. Reilly), she finds a home with all the pitfalls of a urban living- extravagant rent, shifty- eyed super (Pete Postlethwaite) and several deep, dark secrets. Ominous pools of inky- black water keep mysteriously flooding her apartment. Then there's her child's odd new " imaginary" friend who's been whispering things to her at night, and the constant thudding footsteps in the allegedly vacant flat above them. And why, exactly, is Ceci so drawn to that spooky water tower on the roof ?
Connelly isn't exactly new to genre, having appeared in Dario Argento's 1985 psychedelic- slasher movie Phenomena at the tender age of 14. The new picture, however, is better suited to the things- that- go bump- in- your- psyche category. "Actually, I'm loath to specifically label Drak Water a horror film at all", Connelly,34 says as she sips green tea at Wild Lily in Chelsea. "Something like Phenomena, where someone gets a spear through the head in the first ten minutes..
I mean, that's a horror film! There's not a lot of shock or gore in this. Even if you compare it to The Grudge or The Ring remakes, you can see some superficial similarities -' Oh, They all have girls with long dark hair!'- yet the tone of our film feels very different."
Far from being the latest actor eager to jump on the J-horror band-wagon, Connelly-who's already evolved from voluptuous eye candy to Oscar-winning A-lister - stresses that she wasn't interested in the scream-queen routine. She'd never heard of the original Hideo Nakata film until director Walter Salles ( The Motorcycle Diaries), whom she was keen to work with, approached her. What interested her , she says, was the psychological subtext lurking beneath the narrative's murky pools and puddles: Her character, a woman with a lot of unresolved mother issues, is afraid she'll repeat the cycle of neglect and abuse with her offspring. That , to Connelly, is far more chilling than madmen and monsters.
" When I think of the scary movies that really freaked me out," Connelly says, her eyes lighting up, " I think of stuff like Rosemary's Baby, Don't look Now, The Shining. They're scary as hell, but they're less about blood and axes and aberrations than the notion of dealing with something terrible that isn't readily identifiable.
You're really not sure whether all these nightmarish things are happening in Dark Water inside the character's head, if they're just manifestations of some serious emotional baggage. Walter kept saying that it would be just as easy to play the film without a ' horror movie' explanation at all: It's more about a mother and her daughter, which is what really sealed the deal for me. I think it's a smart move to do if you're going to do a supernatural film like this, where there's that central relationship that allows you to float past any leaps of logic". She pauses. " That last pun was totally unintended".
Family plays a huge role in Connelly's life, and she's apt to speak glowingly about her husband, the actor Paul Bettany, and her two sons. Having moved her brood from a cramped Manhattan apartment to a cozy brownstone in her home borough of Brooklyn, Connelly is also well acquainted- despite her presumably hefty budget- with the hell that is Gotham real state. None of that explains, however, the "supernatural" occurrences that took place right after they'd moved in, the toilets started overflowing out of the top of the tanks. Then it gets even weirder: We took a trip to Scotland, and the minute we get off the plane, there are all these voice messages from our alarm company saying the fire department is at our house. We later found out that something happened to the pipes on the fifth floor of the building, and water was gushing everywhere- through the ceiling, down the walls... By th end of it , there was over a foot of water in our kitchen".
"But the oddest thing", Connelly says , leaning in conspiratorially, " was that this all happened right after Walter came by to talk about the movie. He won't confirm it, but naturally I suspect foul play". She lets out a girlish giggle before resuming with a straight face: " He had no faith in me, so he had to resort to some of that Methody stuff. C'mon, Walter! I'm an actress. I can use my imagination".
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