The recent Hollywood horror trend has seen it either disinter old American classics (Amityville, House of Wax) or pinch someone else's for a glossy remake (Ring, The Grudge).

This follows the latter course...but thankfully it's not a mere nuts'n'bolts remake but a terrifyingly reasoned reworking blessed with top-notch performances.

It would have been easy to have simply bought the rights to what was already an effective chiller and installed some competent journeyman in the director's chair.

Yet, the job went - intriguingly - to South American Walter Salles, a director respected for the likes of Motorcycle Diaries, City of God and Central Station.

And, rather than cast the lead role of a psychologically damaged mother with any number of flavour-of-the-month bimbos, the role went to Oscar-winning Jennifer Connolly.

This thoroughly un-Hollywood approach pays handsome dividends with a chillingly intelligent tale of a damaged single mum facing malevolent supernatural forces which threaten her child.

Dahlia Williams (Connelly) is going through a brutal separation from her adulterous husband when finances dictate she find somewhere cheap for her and daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade) to live.

She find herself on the East River's creepy Roosevelt Island and taking a lease on a grubby apartment in a rundown block looked after by dodgy janitor Veeck (Pete Postlethwaite).

The first thing she notices is a damp patch on the ceiling...but dodgy plumbing and temperamental waterworks are the least of her problems when she hears someone upstairs.

Salles, making his Hollywood debut, has crafted a profoundly disturbing story of a evil forces preying on the mind of a mother already torn by maternal instincts and childhood abandonment.

Connolly brings an uncomprehending desperation to the young mother confronting her husband's psychological dirty tricks as well as a ghostly nemesis slowly enveloping her daughter.

It's superior horror fare, beautifully played and rooted in the all-too-believable world of a constant fear you may lose the one you love.

The next time you see a damp patch...you won't call the plumber. You'll move.

Tim Evans

Jennifer Connelly talks to Sky Movies about Dark Water: