Touchstone Pictures Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) is looking for a news start but gets cranky elevators, ceiling leaks, insolent punks, creepy laundries, pipes that spit out air or bursts of brown water, a building manager who promises repairs and a surly super who refuses to make them. Click photo for larger image. "Dark Water" Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material, frightening sequences, disturbing images and brief language. Starring: Jennifer Connelly. Director: Walter Salles. Family Film Guide: 'Dark Water'

Sure, it seems like the apartment building of the damned, but the rent's only $900 and it's in New York -- well, on Roosevelt Island in the East River, to be precise.

The recently separated Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) is searching for an apartment for herself and her 5-year-old daughter, Ceci (Ariel Gade), and can't afford nicer, pricier digs.

The girl nails it when she labels the lobby "yucky" but takes an odd shine to the place after looking around, spotting a telltale ceiling leak and finding a "Hello Kitty" backpack, despite the claim that no children live there.

"Dark Water" is all about trying to find the line between fact and fantasy, between life and afterlife. It's yet another Americanized version of a Japanese horror film, but "The Ring" it's not.

Unlike the typical American horror movie or thriller, it doesn't traffic in cheap thrills. Except for its final 15 minutes, it substitutes mood (with constant rain creating a gray, gloomy air), Angelo Badalamenti music and unease for taut suspense or outright scares. It further muddies the water by casting some look-alike performers.

"Dark Water" makes horror hay out of situations that are every apartment dweller's nightmare: cranky elevators, ceiling leaks, insolent punks, creepy laundries, pipes that spit out air or bursts of brown water, a building manager who promises repairs and a surly super who refuses to make them. The housing complex's cold and dated architectural style is called Brutalism and the term has never seemed more appropriate.

This is where Dahlia is trying to make a new start, while fending off her forceful husband's claims that she isn't stable enough to raise their daughter. As an early scene reveals, Dahlia's mother was an unreliable, angry woman who regularly left her school-age daughter waiting in the rain.

	Touchstone Pictures Dahlia's 5-year-old daughter, Ceci (Ariel Gade), checks out the new digs. Click photo for larger image.

In short order, Dahlia's migraines are raging, her daughter has become disruptive at school, her husband is suing for full custody and that darn leak in the bedroom is spreading like a ceiling cancer or nasty nimbus. On top of that, a little girl's voice seems to be haunting mother and daughter.

Dahlia, a native of Seattle whose only friends seem available by phone, is cut off in all sorts of ways, and Roosevelt Island further enhances that alienation.

The movie opens the door to the possibility that Dahlia's husband is masterminding some of the harassment or that Dahlia is imagining the odd occurrences. Although some questions are left unanswered, it finally comes down on one side of the earthly divide.

"Dark Water," directed by Walter Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries"), doesn't stint in the talent department, starting with Connelly, whose character always seems one crisis away from a meltdown. Perhaps because she's a mother in real life -- and an Oscar-winning actress, for "A Beautiful Mind" -- Connelly has a natural rapport with young Gade.

Supporting roles are filled by the likes of veterans Dougray Scott as the estranged husband, Tim Roth as a lawyer, Pete Postlethwaite as the inattentive super, John C. Reilly as the complex's managing agent and Camryn Manheim as a teacher.

Without such a cast, "Dark Water" would sink like a lead weight. Even with such a cast, it's barely buoyant and suffers from an ending in which the supernatural is more believable than the natural.

	Touchstone Pictures Along with Connelly and Gade, the cast includes John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite. Click photo for larger image.