31 Days of Feminist Horror Films: DARK WATER + THE BABADOOK
A slow-burn ghost story about a pesky domestic annoyance that turns into a supernatural nightmare, Hideo Nakata’s DARK WATER is firmly rooted in the relationship between a newly-single mother and her daughter, starting over in the midst of a messy divorce. Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki) moves into a typical “so you’ve just gotten divorced!” apartment in a brutalist, concrete building with her kindergartener Ikuko (Rio Kanno) while trying to get back on her feet.
Yoshimi is battling divorce lawyers over custody of Ikuko, as her deadbeat husband (and let’s be real: probable men’s rights activist) has finally decided to show an interest in their daughter — “Every year he forgets her birthday,” Yoshimi pleads. Yoshimi has to convince the lawyers that she’s mentally stable, since she once was treated for a psychiatric illness after proofreading too many violent novels in her job as a copywriter. Immediately, we see how Yoshimi is forced to defend her credibility at every turn — Yoshimi’s further put to the test when her new building manager won’t attend to the large, moldy water stain that keeps growing and leaking on her ceiling.
At once a metaphor for how insidious common domestic concerns can become when unattended to (and the emotional labor it takes for mothers to deal with such concerns) and for how the concerns of women are often ignored or downplayed (especially when they’re single, and going through a tough divorce, and struggling in their copywriting work) the water spot continues drip-drip-dripping all over Yoshimi and Ikuko’s new lives. Not to mention the long black hairs that have started showing up in their tap water…
The film takes its time celebrating the strong bond between Yoshimi and Ikuko, even if the world around them doesn’t: mother and daughter giggle together; Yoshimi bolsters her daughter’s self-confidence by having her say her name in a mirror before her first day at a new school (and looks on with pride after she does so in class); and even when Yoshimi begins a chronic pattern of picking Ikuko up late at school, Ikuko still sides with her mother over her father. This is an especially sore spot for Yoshimi, as she repeats the sins of her own mother, as shown in flashback — Yoshimi was often left alone or neglected because of her single mother’s work, and Yoshimi is determined not to do the same with her own daughter.
Of course she’s judged harshly for this lateness and supposed abandonment by her ex (who goes so far as to hire a PI to keep tabs on her, yuck) their lawyers, and the surrounding community, but Yoshimi knows that she’s still doing right by a happy, healthy Ikuko who tells her “I’m okay being with just you, mama.” The film is incredibly pro-single motherhood throughout, with Yoshimi’s single-parenting woes treated with empathy and little judgment. Because of this lived-in, touching central relationship, the audience is much more invested when the film turns spooky after Yoshimi realizes the water spot in her ceiling may be related to a missing girl, Mitsuko, Ikuko’s age, who also lived in their building, on the floor above them.
As Yoshimi begins unraveling the mystery of what happened to Mitsuko, she to grows more and more unhinged — a violent outburst at the divorce lawyers office, making a scene at Ikuko’s school, imploring her building manager to help her. While the mystery of Mitsuko might be making Yoshimi lose her grip on sanity, the way she’s constantly dismissed, ignored, or derided by men in superior positions is just as much to blame for Yoshimi’s instability as the supernatural happenings around her. And of course, Yoshimi can’t just move, because that would be just another signifier of her supposed craziness to her ex-husband.
After a number of encounters with Mitsuko that directly engage with Yoshimi’s own fears about abandonment as both an abandoned daughter and a mother who has abandoned her daughter, the film builds to its climax, in which Mitsuko’s ghastly-but-also-kind-of cute corporeal form (she drowned in the building’s water tank after walking home alone from school one day) confronts Yoshimi, calling her “mama.” Yoshimi tells her she isn’t her mama, but relents when Mitsuko moves in for the kill, and allows herself to be taken away by Mitsuko. The film then jumps ahead ten years, to a teenaged Ikuko who has returned to her hometown with only vague memories of the horrors of her childhood.
But, as she’s drawn back to her old apartment, Ikuko finds something she could’ve never expected: Yoshimi, right where she left her, their apartment tidy as ever. It’s a truly moving moment as Yoshimi meets her daughter again — a real woman now, an entire childhood not spent together — and Ikuko begs Yoshimi to let her stay with her, saying that her father has a whole new life, with a new wife and daughters. Of course, Ikuko can’t stay with her mother: Yoshimi has to be Mitsuko’s mother, and the only way she’s protected her daughter from Mitsuko all these years is to stay with her.
Horror films so often struggle with endings, but because DARK WATER has incredibly relatable stakes — the struggles of single mothers, how abandonment, even if unavoidable, affects children, and how the concerns of women are constantly minimized or dismissed entirely — its ending succeeds in providing both a chilling supernatural finale and making the audience ache for the loss of a daughter that’s been experienced by Yoshimi, and the loss of a mother that’s been experienced by Ikuko.
DARK WATER is still underseen, even after it was remade in America and Nakata found success with RINGU. DARK WATER has also influenced films like MAMA, and proved to be a spookily prescient precursor to the unsolved case of Elisa Lam. Stories of single mothers and daughters are still a tough sell at the studio level, but horror allows these stories to fully blossom in a way few other genres do.
DARK WATER is available from Amazon.
DARK WATER would be a great double feature with THE BABADOOK — both films are about the terror of being a single mother, with a supernatural twist. Yoshimi and Amelia might have totally different feelings about their children initially, but both want to succeed at being mothers because of a loss in their own lives. Even when their fears are consistently dismissed by the men around them, Yoshimi and Amelia keep fighting. Both mothers make tremendous sacrifices in order to assure their child’s safety in the end.
Not wanting to be a mother, or worse yet, being a mother and not loving the experience is still one of the biggest taboos for women in modern society. THE BABADOOK’s greatest frights come not from Mister Babadook himself, but from the terror of being an isolated, broke, single mother with a problem child and no support system.
Essie Davis turns in what should have been an Oscar-nominated performance as Amelia, a single mother to Sam (Noah Wiseman), whose erratic behavior and temper tantrums only intensify after the mysterious storybook Mister Babadook shows up on their doorstep. Sam becomes convinced that Mister Babadook has taken up residence in their home, and in one of the film’s key scenes, he interrupts Amelia with this knowledge while she tries to masturbate. Female masturbation in film is still fairly rare, and writer-director Jennifer Kent provides a really empathetic beat for Amelia with this scene.
Sam has stolen Amelia’s privacy and personal autonomy in every area of her life, as children often do. When Sam invades this incredibly private moment, it’s easy to understand why Amelia has lost all patience with her son. Kent uses this scene to explore how being a mother has neutered Amelia sexually, which mirrors common sentiments about how women lose their sexual agency after becoming mothers.
Already at the end of her rope and feeling like a madwoman when local authorities intervene (Kent certainly highlights the fact that women are usually put off as paranoid or delusional when dealing with danger, as is the case when Amelia tries to convince police of Mister Babadook’s existence), things only get worse for Amelia when Sam breaks the nose of a young friend after she teases him for not having a father, totally isolating them from their support system. The absence of Amelia’s husband, who died driving Amelia to the hospital for Sam’s birth, looms large for mother and son, and Amelia places a lot of undue blame on her son for his death.
Most of Amelia’s characterization stems from the resentment and anger she carries for her son because of his role in her husband’s death, when of course he had actually had nothing to do with it — it’s an unlikable stance, but certainly a believable one. When Mister Bababook possesses Amelia, it definitely seems as if she might murder her own child in an attempt to get her husband back, something Mister Babadook has promised. It’s an incredibly bold choice to portray Amelia as ready to kill her son in an attempt to get her husband back, but given Sam’s behavior throughout the film, the audience is able to see where Amelia is coming from, even if they can’t fully empathize with her.
Sam’s love ultimately helps Amelia rid herself of Mister Babadook (though not before she tries to strangle him in another maternal taboo-busting scene), but as the storybook promises: you can’t get rid of the Babadook. So, Amelia and Sam learn to live with Mister Babadook in their basement, and the film’s message is ultimately that you can’t ever really get rid of grief or darkness, but you can learn to live with it. Amelia learns to live with her resentment of her son for his inadvertent role in her husband’s death, and can finally reflect on how her own grief-based failings as a mother have impacted Sam’s development.
THE BABADOOK is ultimately a horror film about growing through grief, and how the bond between mother and child, even when pushed to the very limits of sanity, can supersede anything that goes bump in the night.
THE BABADOOK is available from Google Play and other streaming services.
