John C Reilly: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

3. Mr Murray - Dark Water (2005)

I actually don't think Dark Water is a fully terrible movie: it's a fairly harmless, occasionally creepy Americanisation of a far superior J-horror original that fudges the spirit a little and attempts to trade solely on the "oh, I recognise these faces more than those foreign ones" feeling Western audiences are supposed to love.

The problem is that Reilly is sort of dropped in entirely needlessly as a recognisable face for the sake of it. He's malevolent enough to convince you that yes, all estate agents really are the spawn of Satan. It's an odd casting, because he's not really known for snivelling weasels and for a character actor to have such little time to build an actual character is just problematic.

Perhaps I'm asking too much, but this felt like a wasted casting: he is never quite enough of a caricature to unsettle and it's hard to destabilise audience expectations enough to accept he's not a good guy under the slime.