Review of Dark Waters (1993)
Seen in 2015.
A Londoner discovers through her inheritance that her last living parent supported an obscure and unmentioned convent. She makes an appointment to see it for herself.
The basic plot hook held some promise. It could easily have been used to tell a story that made some sense, but there is no serious attempt here to set the clichéd “horror” in a credible or relatable context, beyond the hook. The director shoots for some kind of mythic atmosphere, and misses. The Christian iconography and morality are not reconciled with the Lovecraftian aspects of the story, the unsynchronized sound is annoying, and the pace is too slow for the dull cinematography to support: with all that water it tries to be Tarkovsky and fails.