Dark Waters

MOVIE #1,165 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 09.27.23 Whereas today’s other “same name” selection (Dark SKIES) was at least vaguely similar, genre-wise, Dark Waters (1993) could not be any more different than Dark Waters (2019), Todd Haynes’s biopic about a lawyer taking on the evils of corporate corruption and pollution. This is a bit hard to follow, though never quite so dramatically that it loses the audience. The expo is secondary to the aesthetics and vibes and that's fine. It’s essentially a late-period giallo and it has many of the earmarks of the subgenre, a favorite of mine. I appreciated the visual storytelling even if the story is batshit and borderline incomprehensible. There’s a lovely variation in shot styles, with wide static takes, slow pans and zooms, and some frenetic POV camera movement. The editing, to less successful results, is equally all over the map.

Another film with a fascinating production history (it was filmed on location in Crimea, Rome and Moscow), this is considered Italian writer-director Mariano Baino’s most notable feature work. While a lesser name in the field, for sure, I am still interested in checking out his other movies.

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Dark Waters (also known as Dead Waters in the American home-video edition), is a 1994 horror film directed by Mariano Baino, who co-wrote it with Andy Bark and also served as the editor. It was released on December 29, 1993.