Pretty Good

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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The great horror directors of the nineties are sort of the genre's "lost generation," in that they were never given the opportunity to expand their visions into full bodies of work like, say, Argento or Carpenter. Filmmakers like Richard Stanley (of Hardware and Dust Devil fame) and Michele Soavi (the genius behind Dellamorte Dellamore) seemed set to create a new tradition of visionary horror, but somehow fate conspired against them; Stanley fell out with the industry after his attempt at filming The Island of Dr. Moreau went absurdly awry, while Soavi gave up a promising career in cinema after his son fell ill. I now think we can add another name to that sad list: Mariano Baino.With most of the great Italian horror directors either retired or dead, and the other greats like Argento and Lamberto Bava starting their sad declines, Soavi and Baino seemed set to inherit the throne. While Soavi cut his teeth directing films for Argento, he finally found his own voice with Dellamorte Dellamore. With Dark Waters, Baino also introduced his own unique vision. While parts of the film pay tribute to the old masters (an early murder scene recalls Pupi Avati's The House with Laughing Windows, and one image is an exact quotation from Suspiria), Baino's approach to horror is more reminiscent of Tarkovsky (who is also a huge influence on Stanley, incidentally).The narrative of a girl returning to the sinister convent where she was born, only to find the nuns guarding a sinister abomination, is reminiscent of Lovecraft, but Baino is more interested in creating astonishing images and a dank atmosphere than in his derivative plot. Some memorable visuals include nuns bearing burning crosses down stony beaches; a monstrous, crucified nun floating down a foggy corridor; and a mural of atrocities painted by a blind oracle.Though the film isn't bloodless, the approach is more stately and subdued than that of most Italian horror directors. As I said, the long tracking shots down rainy corridors and the ambitious imagery are more Tarkovsky-like, though this film is definitely more accessible than any of his works. Some people might lose patience with the meandering narrative, but I found that Baino's astonishing visuals powered it through the slower stretches; the first half hour in particular is a real tour de force of visual storytelling, with almost no dialogue. I also enjoyed the bizarre performances by the supporting cast members. Likely cast in the Ukraine, where the film was shot, most of them seem to struggle with their English-language dialogue, but it only heightens the oneiric atmosphere Baino was going for.As I said earlier, the story on hand isn't particularly original, but in every other respect this is really an undeservedly obscure masterwork, which makes the fate of its director all the more disappointing. While Stanley directed at least two great movies before vanishing into documentary hell, and Soavi gave us four really interesting horror films, this is Baino's only feature film to date. Thus we may never know what Baino would have been capable of had he been given the opportunity to hone his skills as a storyteller. He supposedly wrapped a film last year, but I can't find any concrete info on it, and it's been my experience that once promising directors tend to disappoint when they jump back into the saddle after a decades long absence. True inspiration unfortunately tends to be a limited time offer, and it's sad that these great artists were not allowed to create when they still had their inner fires; Richard Stanley's The Mother of Toads, for instance, proved to be sadly embarrassing. Still, I'd like to be proved wrong.

The first time I saw this movie, I knew one thing: I was very intrigued by it, maybe even mesmerized, but I was also confused about the plot, as I found the story construction very hard to follow. I realize now that director Mariano Baino had no interest in making use of a classical narrative structure to tell the story. This film gave me the impression that someone was able to record another person's nightmare and turn it into a movie, with some editing work on the side. The plot presents inconsistencies, and events that are somewhat incoherent or hard to explain. Coherence is not the strongest point of this film, which reminded me of other horror Italian horror directors such as Lucio Fulci or Michele Soavi, among others, whose films are powerful in imagery and horror elements, while not putting much effort on the consistence of the story. The effort that Mariano Baino doesn't put in making the story all polished and tidy, he compensates it by creating a dark, oneiric atmosphere, which makes it easy to forgive and even appreciate illogical situations, that in other cases, one would criticize.In "Dark Waters", a young English woman named Elizabeth travels to an old rural island in Russia, after finding out that her recently deceased father had been sending money to a convent there. At the same time, Elizabeth has been receiving letters from a friend of hers named Theresa, who also happens to live in said convent (presumably because she wants to become a nun). In these letters, Theresa tells Elizabeth that she has a special connection to the convent, which prompts her visit to the place. Theresa is brutally murdered by a nun, after finding a hidden amulet. When Elizabeth arrives, she is told that Theresa simply left without giving explanations. The mother superior assigns a friendly young nun called Sarah as a guide during Elizabeth's visit. When Elizabeth settles in, she starts having visions about her past, dreams about the convent and herself as a little girl. At some point, Elizabeth tells Sarah that she wasn't born in England and she was actually born in the island, but doesn't remember anything from her childhood years. In the form of dreams and flashbacks, the mysteries surrounding Elizabeth's life begin to unravel, until she comes to realize that her connection with the island goes way back, to those missing years of her childhood that she can't remember."Dark Waters" is gifted with an undeniable Lovecraftian nature and this is not merely a coincidence, since this film was originally conceived as an adaptation of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", with an entire town filled with mutants, instead of evil nuns and creepy villagers. Though the story was eventually changed due to budgetary reasons, the Lovecraftian elements can still be found, such as the impossibility to escape fate. Elizabeth, our young lead, finds herself traveling to a remote place, with vague reasons that simply don't quite justify her trip, but she travels anyway, because it's her destiny to be there and come across the truth about herself and those years that she can't recall. Elizabeth's presence on the island brings chaos and horrible events that are meant to occur. Another Lovecraftian element that we can find is questionable parentage, because in Lovecraft literature, it is frequent for the relatives of the main characters to be depicted as abnormal, which is something that can be found in this story as well. Also, throughout the film, Elizabeth reads different quotes from ancient books that she finds at the library inside the convent, and these passages are very reminiscent of Lovecraft, such as "She who was, and is not, and yet is". The apocalyptic nature of "Dark Waters" is also very similar to what one could find in Lovecraft's stories, in which humans are portrayed as insignificant beings that are destined to surrender to beastly and ominous creatures from a higher realm.Though the acting is mostly plain and the dialogs are rather artificial, this actually works in favor of the narrative, as it builds a dream-like surrealistic atmosphere. Was this supposed to be intentional? I'm not so sure; this artificial dialogs and monotonous voice tone is very common in co-productions, where the actors are supposed to speak English, even though it's not their native language, which leads to effortless dubs, that sound out of place… and mystifying in this particular case. The photography and the locations in this film are brilliant and one of the main reasons why the imagery seems to be taken out of someone else's nightmare. The lights and shadows are handled perfectly, giving and eerie effect to the convent and even the nuns, who seem to appear from out of nowhere. The music composed by Igor Clark is very fitting. In more than one occasion, we hear a pipe organ playing a dark melody, which I found to be very old school and Gothic.I will most likely have to see this film more times to fully appreciate it, because it seems like "Dark Waters" is one of those stories that simply get better the more one sees it, as it probably contains a lot of things that are not too out there.

I've been looking forward to seeing Dark Waters for ages, and with that in mind; I have to say that the film is a huge disappointment. The film is definitely style over substance, and it would seem that director Mariano Baino (a man with only one film credit) was happy to have it that way as Dark Waters features a wealth of memorable nasty sequences, but hardly anything in terms of plot and coherency. Italian films aren't exactly renowned for making a whole lot of sense; but the plot here is completely pointless, and this ensures that the film is actually really boring and the stylish elements just aren't enough to save it. The film focuses on an island where strange things are afoot. The island features a bizarre convent full of nuns who don't seem to be interested in God, as well as a load of other strange and eerie characters. We follow Elizabeth; a young girl who travels to said island, where she just happens to have been born, as she constantly suffers from nightmares about it. It's obvious that there's a strange ancient evil on the island, and after staying there; she soon finds that there is no escape...The main influence on this film would seem to be the work of H.P. Lovecraft, as themes of ancient evil being reawakened are rife, and the film features a typically Lovecraftian atmosphere. It is for this reason that Dark Waters is so disappointing as if it could only have been fused with an interesting storyline, we could have had a masterpiece. If I were to slot this film into a genre, it would be somewhere between nunsploitation and good old Gothic horror as the film features themes from both sides of the spectrum. I'm guessing that the director didn't really know what he wanted the film to be, as it's all very disjointed and that makes it a shame that Mariano Baino was the man at the helm as someone with more experience could have done a lot better. It's hard to really judge the acting performances given the nature of the film, but lead actress Louise Salter at least looks the part and fits into the film nicely, which is to Dark Waters' credit. The island itself certainly has presence, and the cinematography is generally of a high standard too, which is nice in that it ensures the film is easy on the eyes. Still, it all boils down to the fact that there is no plot here and, unfortunately, the style isn't enough to save it!