People expecting haunted-house horror, as the advertising for Dark Water promises, will be very disappointed. That's a shame, because it's a good film that's been mishandled. Some of the scary images in the preview trailer aren't even in the film. Dark Water never scares you out of your seat, mostly because it was never intended to.

This remake of a moody, supernatural Japanese film is an intelligent exploration of themes like abandonment and sacrifice. The supernatural overtones are used carefully to support the story rather than as a substitute for a story. There is a growing sense of dread in Dark Water, marked mostly by strange leaks and an almost endless rainstorm. The source of both versions is a novel by Koji Suzuki, who also wrote The Ring.

Walter Salles' version, with a script by Fearless author Rafael Yglesias, actually tightens up a few of the plot holes and provides elements of character motivation missing from the 2002 Japanese version. The premise is that a divorcing couple is in a child custody dispute. Dahlia, played by Jennifer Connelly, moves with her daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade) to a cheap and somewhat rundown apartment on Roosevelt Island, off Manhattan. Dahlia's husband maintains in the divorce proceedings that she is unfit and mentally unstable. Her husband might be spying on her — or, even worse, trying to drive her crazy. Dahlia was neglected as a child and is herself concerned that she's not up to the task of parenting.

Her daughter strikes up a close relationship with a seemingly imaginary friend. She insists that the friend, whom she calls Natasha, is real. Natasha likes to play on the roof. Oddly, a little girl who used to live in the apartment upstairs, where all the water comes from, was also named Natasha.

Dahlia's potential instability isn't helped by the stress of single parenting, compounded by strange events that soon start to happen — most of them centered on an unstoppable leak in the bedroom ceiling. And there is that child's knapsack that keeps popping up, no matter how many times it is thrown away.

This seems to be an odd project for Salles, whose previous feature film Motorcycle Diaries looked at the political awakening of Ernesto Che Guevera. Salles is perhaps best-known for Central Station, a social drama set in Brazil that got an Oscar nomination in 1999. Salles commented briefly on why he made Dark Water while he was in Karlovy Vary to promote Motorcycle Diaries.

"I like genre films — I think they say a lot about why we fear, about urban solitude," he said. "You can see the society work through its cracks. I wouldn't dismiss genre films just because they are genre films."

But he also looked on the experience of doing a studio-based English-language film as a test. "It can either make you completely change your pattern, or it can reaffirm your desire to work within your own frontiers. And this experience outside my language and my territory only reaffirmed my desire to go more in-depth in the direction I come from," he said. He added that his next film will be shot in Brazil with one of the main actors from Central Station.

The experience of making the film was a bit overwhelming for Salles, he said, and at several points he thought he would never finish it. While Salles might not be back making studio films anytime soon, that doesn't mean Dark Water was not a successful venture. He brought a sympathetic touch to the material and utilized contemporary family issues as a strong background.

The film builds to a subtle, unexpected conclusion that draws its themes together nicely. Jennifer Connelly's role is similar to the one she played in House of Sand and Fog, where she was just barely coping. Here, she finds a good blend of strength and vulnerability. Other actors, including Tim Roth as a lawyer who lives in his car and John C. Reilly as an uncaring real estate agent, help to make this a strong character study rather than a typically blood-filled horror film.