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DVD Title |
Dark Water |
International Title |
Dark
Water |
DVD Length |
Original Length |
101 Minutes |
101 Minutes |
Company |
Year of Manufacture |
ADV Films |
2005 |
Language |
Subtitles |
Japanese, English |
English |
Region |
Number of Discs |
1 |
1 |
Aspect Ratio |
Sound |
1.85:1 |
5.1 Surround |
Extras |
. |
Menus (English) |
. |
Chapters (17) |
. |
Trailers: Dark
Water, Shinobi (ADV Films), Yesterday
(ADV Films), 2009 Lost Memories (ADV Films),
Gun Crazy: Beyond the Law (ADV Films), Conduct
Zero (ADV Films), Neo Tokyo (ADV Films) |
 |
|
Captures |
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Review |
After shelving this title for an incredible
amount of time, obviously to capitalize on the
US remake of the film, ADV finally delivers the
goods. Was it worth the wait? Sadly, not really.
Dark Water features an average video
transfer and a good audio presentation, but it's
topped off with a very sparse amount of added
content to speak of.
|
Video: |
 |
ADV churns out another average, at best, video
presentation here. In fact, upon first watching
this DVD I was instantly reminded of ADV's Gamera:
Revenge of Iris release, and those familiar
with that release should recognize some of the
problems that arise here. The coloring, for example,
is fairly monotone here, with no rich or vibrant
array of colors present in the least. On a more
positive note, at least the film isn't discolored
in anyway, just make sure not to be alarmed at
the blue or yellow tinted scenes in the film as
they are intentional. The brightness level is
handled fairly well here at least, with all details
being readibly visible while not being set high
enough to drown out the darker shades.
Unfortunatly, the disc's real blemish is the
wide variety of digitial inconsistences present.
Artifacting is noticeable, as the film appears
to have been compressed here quite a bit as pixilation
is present. Edge enhancment also rears its ugly
head on this release, as the entire film looks
blurred, lacking any real true focus. As for noise, there
is a "healthy" amount of grain present,
although this is possibly by intent as was common for horror movies of this time. It should be noted that
the print used here is ADV's own version for the
film. What this means is that English title cards
have been burned (in other words, not removable)
onto the opening credits to provide translations,
while the end credits have been discarded in favor
of ADV's version (the latter of which is a bonus,
as they translate almost the entire thing).
Lastly, the viewing area of the film itself is
noticeably reduced here, with large black areas
added to the left and right of the picture, as
seen in the screen captures above. Thankfully,
this is only a problem to those watching from
a DVD-Rom, as when watched on a normal player,
connected to a TV, the disc will play properly
without the black area on either side. Still a
nusiance to those who fall into the former category,
though. Dark Water is presented here
in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 at least,
and is also Anamorphic for widescreen TVs.
|
Audio: |
 |
The highlight of the disc, without a doubt.
ADV has supplied two audio tracks for Dark
Water. The first is a near flawless transfer
of the film's original Japanese audio track, presented
here in a 5.1 surround mix. ADV has done an excellent
job with speaker distinction on the surround track
too, causing effects like the running water to
sound like they are happening all across the room,
if one has the sound system to support it. The
second audio track is a 5.1 surround presentation
of the film dubbed in English. The surround part
of the second track is done well, with sound effects
still having that nice distinction in the speakers;
however, the actual dubbed voices are just too
far gone here. To put it bluntly, they sound horrendous;
in fact, there sounds to be a good amount of echo
added to the voiceovers, like these were rather
haphazardly recorded in a open studio.
The quality of the dub track aside, the disc
does a fairly good job in regards to the, removable,
English subtitling here. As expected, this is
intended to accompany the Japanese audio track,
as opposed to the dubbed track, and does a fairly
faithful job with the translations. A great aspect
of the subtitles here is that they are color coded
to show when more than one person is talking during
a given scene, with the default being yellow and
the secondary color being white.
|
Extras: |
 |
Not much in the way of extras to talk about
here. The disc proudly boasts about the "original
Japanese trailer" that can be found inside,
and in reality that's the only extra of any substance.
The trailer featured here, on the positive side,
does have English subtitles, however, they aren't
removable. The trailer itself isn't in the best
of shape either, obviously heavily compressed
here and with a fair amount of yellow discoloring.
The other "extra" is a set of ADVs self
made previews for six other films, which, like
other ADV films, act more like commercials than
anything worth touting.
On a side note, there are a couple of adverts
that play automatically when the disc is inserted
into a player, and will have to be skipped past,
or endured, before one gets to the main menu.
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Overview: |
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Bottom line, it's a passable release of a excellent
horror film, although only the audio portion of
this release is worth praising. Thankfully, ADV
titles tend to retail for fairly cheap, so at
least one can't be too cross in regards to the
quality.
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- Anthony Romero |
Buy
this DVD |
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