Domestic film project "Black Water" - a tape with a difficult fate. Created several years ago, it hung for a while on post-production and surfaced in 2017, when Roman Karimov made the comedy hit “Walk, Vasya!”, And the name of Irina Starshenbaum became known in connection with the premiere of “Attraction”, in which she starred after "Black water."
Ups and downs of production
Many reviews and reviews of the film “Black Water” openly relish the features of the project's production and post-production. The fact is that at the initial stages of the tape production, the creative tandem of Alexander Lungin and Sergey Osipyan worked on the script. But producer Andrei Novikov, after reviewing their work, said that the film does not fit into the allocated budget. Then the artisan turned to Roman Karimov, who adjusted the script, removed most of the tricks, the episode with the destruction of the whole village and adapted the narrative to the available financial resources. As a result, Karimov took the director's chair and picked up the main performers himself, including debutant Irina Starshenbaum. According to reviews on Black Water, the director, who previously shot exclusively comedies, later regretted that he agreed to work on horror. IMDb feed rating: 5.20.
Initially, the picture was conceived as an environmental horror story about a group of young scientists who arrived in a village forgotten by God to collect water samples. But reviews of the film "Black Water", published by film experts, are doubtful of the genre claimed by the creators. Critics emphasize that the narrative, although it contains a certain fraction of the unobtrusive Slavic “mysticism of rivers and lakes,” is based on a clearly passive psychological drama with elements of a clumsy detective story.
Plot
The narrative is twisted around the personalities of the three central characters. Maxim (actor Dmitry Bogdan) takes his half-brother Petya (actor Evgeni Alekhin) from the rehabilitation center and takes him on a risky trip with the hope of improving his health. Together with the brothers, the beloved of Maxim - Polina (actress Irina Starshenbaum) sets off. The vessel, which Maxim recently acquired, stands in the backwash of the dam, not far from which there is a village with local residents convinced that the water in their area is cursed and the dam is filled with the dead. According to the reviewers in the reviews of Black Water, it’s pointless to tell the story further, since the detective line of the film is too simple, and the experienced spectator immediately understands what's what.
Advantages and disadvantages
According to the assessment of domestic filmmakers, expressed in reviews of Black Water, in the cinema everyone is screaming that all the main components are frankly raw, suffering from a lack of funds, time and experience. At the same time, if you try to abstract and perceive the tape from scratch, you can find the advantages. For example, insinuating mysticism of individual scenes, atmospheric visualization, a spectacular picture, chic musical accompaniment and surprisingly attractive Irina Starshenbaum. Also, the beholder will certainly remember the final epilogue, beautiful and sad.
Of course, all of the above is not a good reason for recommending Karimov’s work for mandatory viewing. The genre of the Russian horror is still waiting for its messiah. But most reviews of Black Water are too critical and categorical.