Troubled young Elizabeth (well played by the lovely Louise Salter) goes to a remote Crimean island to investigate the death of her father and the disappearance of a missing friend. The island is populated by a bizarre order of sinister nuns who reside in a convent. Assisted by the friendly Sarah (an engaging performance by Venera Simmons),Elizabeth uncovers some dark secrets pertaining to her past and discovers an ancient evil force in the bowels of the convent. Director/co-writer Mariano Baino shows a remarkably sharp and stunning eye for unnerving visuals. Moreover, Baino does an expert job of creating and maintaining a compellingly spooky atmosphere and punctuates the picture with occasional outbursts of startlingly brutal violence. The grim, brooding tone gets more progressively gloomy and unsettling as the story unfolds and culminates in an especially chilling last third. The island setting projects a potent sense of dread and isolation. While the narrative is a bit vague, the suffocating brooding mood keeps the film on track and really gets under your skin. Another interesting aspect of the picture is that men are relegated to minor roles; the main characters are all female. It's this willingness to break from standard horror conventions that in turn gives this movie an extra refreshing edge. Alex Howe's handsome, fluid cinematography, Igor Clark's shuddery score, and the uncompromisingly bleak ending all further enhance the overall nightmarish quality of this supremely eerie shocker.

If you already think the title of this user-comment is weird, just wait until you see the rest of the movie! Mariano Baino's "Dark Waters" is an old-fashioned creepy chiller and perhaps even the most underrated horror film of the last three decades. It's definitely the best Italian horror film of the nineties, along with Michele Soavi's "Dellamorte Dellamore", even though they severely differ in tone and content. The plot of "Dark Waters" is very confusing and contains an incredible amount of holes; still Biano manages to create a genuinely unsettling atmosphere and stuffs his film with nightmarish images and unlikely monsters. The beautiful Elizabeth travels back to the remote and hard-to-reach island where she spent her childhood years in a convent. Even though her mother died here and despite the fact her father advised her on his deathbed never to return, Elizabeth is drawn to the convent, more particularly to the ominous dungeons and hidden passageways. The creepy setting of "Dark Waters" reminded me a lot of "The Name of the Rose". Due to their strict and isolated life-styles, the nuns in this convent look mad and petrifying (some of them appear to be more than 150 years old!) and together they hide dark and very UN-catholic secrets. It's truly odd, but also strangely disturbing, to see nuns running around with burning torches and damaged crucifixes. "Dead Waters" also features a handful of grisly images and a fairly gruesome finale, but the film is mostly about style and atmosphere. It's practically always raining on this island, the nights seem to last twice as long as the days and even the villagers that live outside the convent look spooky. The music is very good, too, and lead actress Louise Salter is fascinating to look at. If the script had been a little more coherent and structured, this would have been a brilliant horror film. Now, it's just a very good one.

After the death of her father, Elizabeth travels to a remote island, where a convent may hold the secret to the death of her mother. There, she finds nuns who conduct strange rituals in the catacombs beneath the building in an attempt to hold the evil there at bay.

One of the first Western films to be shot in the Ukraine following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the birth of this movie was as difficult as Elizabeth's. The sets and locations are otherworldly yet inexpensive, but the political situation was rife with problems, like two coups that took place during the shooting and dubbing of the film.

Director Mariano Baino had only directed the short Caruncula before this, but his eye is steady and strong. There's a definite air of looming Lovecraftian dread in this. It looks almost like a Soavi film. And while it has no score, the sound effects more than make up for it.

Any film that has squads of nuns burning buildings and killing people - as well as a crucified zombie nun and a savage elder god hidden beneath the world - is worth checking out. It doesn't have the greatest story in the world, but when has that ever stopped our enjoyment of a horror film?