Last night’s Friday Night Fright Fest was good, scary fun.

We wound up watching three very different movies. The first was Drag Me to Hell, a silly, gory Sam Raimi frippery to get us warmed up. Then we watched REC, which I mentioned in my last blog post and which suitably made everyone very jumpy (I was surprised to find it was just as creepy the second time around as the first). And we wrapped up the evening’s entertainment with the original Japanese version of Dark Water, directed by Hideo Nakata of Ringu fame.

Like many great Asian horror films and thrillers of the last decade, Dark Water was remade in America several years ago (with Hideo Nakata as one of the writers). But unusually, I think the remake really stands up on its own as a good film. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I like the remake better, though that may just be because I’m more familiar with it.

Dark Water is not so much a horror film as a gloomy ghost story with an atmosphere of sadness and desperation rather than fear. Though there are some creepy and harrowing moments in both the original and the remake, it’s less a tale of terror than it is a portrait of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and a depiction of how far a mother will go to protect her child. Both the original and the remake are slow-moving and murky, but in a good way; they take their time letting the tale unravel in a stiflingly oppressive atmosphere. If you like haunting films like The Others or El Orfanato (also currently being remade in America), chances are you’ll like one or both versions of Dark Water.

On the subject of gloomy psychological horror films, I can’t believe I forgot to mention Don’t Look Now in my list of scariest movies. In tone and theme, it bears some resemblance to Dark Water; it’s an exploration of parental love and grief which unfolds in its own good time and wallows in gothic gloom. Again, it’s not a traditional blood-and-guts scare-fest, but the atmosphere is consistently foreboding and the climax is utterly terrifying—in fact, I always look away because it freaks me out so much.

And for straight-up frights, I should have mentioned The Descent as well. This low-budget British film with (unusually) an all-female cast is positively awash in blood and gore, but it also does a nice job of ratcheting up the psychological drama by examining female friendships and betrayals and, like Don’t Look Now, parental love and grief. I would avoid watching it if you’re claustrophobic, however. (N.B. The film was released in America with a slightly different and, in my opinion, weaker ending; filmmakers clearly don’t trust American audiences to either read subtitles or handle bleakness very well.)

Updated two minutes after original post: I (somewhat) take back what I said about American filmmakers not doing bleakness—I just remembered The Mist, a good, frightening film by Frank Darabont based on a Stephen King story which has got about the bleakest ending of any film I’ve ever seen. Frank Darabont fought very, very hard for that ending, and it was worth it.