Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark Has Guillermo del Toro Written All Over It
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Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark has much of the look and feel of the masterful Pans Labyrinth with creepy CGI creatures and a thick dark undercurrent.
Written by The Horror Czar, Don Sumner
August 28, 2011
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Release: August 26, 2011 (U.S. Theatrical)
Directed by: Troy Nixey
Written by: Guillermo del Toro (also a producer), Matthew Robbins and Nigel McKeand (1973 teleplay)
Starring:
Bailee Madison as Sally
Katie Holmes as Kim
Guy Pearce as Alex
Jack Thompson as Harris
Edwina Ritchard as Housekeeper
Garry McDonald as Blackwood
Poor little Sally (Bailee Madison) is a child destined for psychological troubles and anxiety. Not only is her mother a bit of a partier who has no time for her so ships her off to her father’s house (Guy Pearce) but Dad has a girlfriend much younger than he is (Katie Holmes) and lives in an enormous mansion he is restoring with dreams of getting it on the cover of architectural digest. There are workers and old people everywhere Sally looks, including a grizzled caretaker who comes from a long line of men who looked after this old house (Jack Thompson). Through it all nobody has much time for Sally.
The house has quite a history as well, and had not historically been safe for kids. The previous owner was a famous nature artist named Blackwood (Garry McDonald) and his son disappeared mysteriously just days before Blackwood himself also disappeared. Everything seems to hinge on the furnace grate in the hidden basement, and Sally is determined to get it open and see just what those noises really are.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a remake of the 1973 T.V. movie of the same name and adheres to the themes of that original if not the details. The original is a very good film responsible for the nightmares of many a child in it’s day, and leave it to Guillermo del Toro to get behind bringing this one onto the big screen with more action and more technology. The themes are basic childhood nightmare stuff – small monsters running around under the bed and getting under the covers – exactly the reason we always check there before drifting off to sleep. This movie makes every worst-case scenario our imaginations conjure up when we hear an unexplained noise come to life.
The area where Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark could have done
better is in the suspense department. The story is made for suspense as
strange noises of unseen creatures move through the house and grow in
intensity before putting their grotesque little faces in your path.
Director Troy Nixey, credited only with the CGI laden short Latchkey's
Lament
prior to this film, opted instead
to simply show the creatures much of the time like evil Lilliputians
from a dark version of "Gulliver’s Travels". Don’t Be Afraid of
the Dark plays a bit more like CGI fantasy than horror in the
times when the hairy hunchbacks are running amok, and the result is a
film not nearly as scary as it could have been had the monsters from
the basement been given much less screen time. Although the CGI effects
are quite good indeed, the package comes off as a bit cartoonish.
The performances carry the film, most notably 11 year old Bailee Madison as young Sally. Madison does a great job being as real as she can be considering she was battling unseen foes in the sound stage. Character actor Jack Thompson as the groundskeeper Harris is fantastic as well, playing the grumpy and worried keeper of the house’s secrets very big and perfectly. The biggest surprise to those not particularly familiar with her work is the stand out performance of Katie Holmes as Kim. Holmes had a promising career as a young actress until her highly publicized marriage to Tom Cruise overshadowed her individual promise and made her part of a wacky couple subject to tabloid fodder rather than a talented actress in her own right. Holmes proves she’s still got the goods in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and winds up being the only character throughout the film who is consistently liked.
Overall Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a very good film with great performances and expert effects. The horror is a tad tame for fear junkies due to the lack of unseen or unknown, but the nightmare quotient is certainly too high for young children. This is a big production with a modest budget that is just as one would expect from Guillermo del Toro. If only it was a little scarier.
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