Director Walter Salles ( Motorcycle Diaries) tackles the remake of a Japanese horror movie by Hideo Nakata ( The Ring).

It's the story of a woman in the throes of a marriage break-up, searching for a place where she and her young daughter can live. They move into a dingy New York apartment that has a stain on the ceiling and before long, discover secrets and terrors that seem to be part of the fabric of the building. These, it seems, also have a good deal to do with repressed elements of the woman's past.

Nakata began his movie in a matter-of-fact way and let the horrors accumulate gradually but Salles goes more rapidly into creepy, threatening, shock-horror mode and the film suffers for it.

But there are still powerful elements, particularly the performance of Jennifer Connelly as the overwrought mother, haunted by her childhood abandonment. Ariel Garde, as her daughter, and Tim Roth, as her enigmatic lawyer, give strong support.

Jennifer Connelly rescues her portrait of the plumber

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Genre           Horror
Run Time        105 minutes
Rated           M
Country         United States
Year            205
Director        Walter Salles
Actors          Jennifer Connelly , Dougray Scott, Ariel Gade, John C. Reilly
DVD Release     15 February 2006
DVD Extras      Featurettes, deleted scenes.