Get ready for ghostly goings-on in Hideo Nakata's damp and creepy follow-up to "Ringu".

If J-horror derives its primary chills from the irrational and inexplicable, then it’s no wonder that Hideo Nakata’s literal-minded ghost story Dark Water is about as frightening as a soggy diaper. Unemployed mother Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki) is engaged in a...

If you enjoyed Ring - the Japanese original, not the occult thriller's crass, nonsensical Americanised remake - then Dark Water, from the same duo (writer Koji Suzuki, director Hideo Nakata), should provide a follow-up frisson. It is more spartan - virtually a two-hander ghost story about a mother and child, but with a similar concentration of slowly engaging terror.

Nakata Hideo’s J-horror classic 'Dark Water' examines recurrent cycles of familial and institutional negligence.