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55%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #2,405
...out of 20,684 movies
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A young girl is sent to live with her estranged father and his girlfriend at their new home. The father, Alex has plans to spruce up the home with the help of his interior decorator girlfriend, Kim. The previous owner of the home was a famous painter who mysteriously disappeared. Alex's daughter, Sally, soon discovers the cause of the painter's disappearance.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: January 13, 2012
I was pretty excited for Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. Sure, it's a remake and it stars Mrs. Scientology herself, but it also has Guillermo del Toro working in its favor and it got a lot of great reviews. I never saw the original movie, and while I generally prefer to watch the original movies before watching remakes, I just had to pop this one in tonight and take a peek after hearing someone I know gush about it. Unfortunately, gushing is one thing that I will not be doing in this review.
The plot finds Alex (Guy Pearce) and Kim (Katie Holmes) working to renovate an old house so that they can sell it, when Alex's ex-wife sends their daughter Sally (Bailee Madison) off to live with them. Alex is a loving father and Kim is a nice enough woman, so it should all work out. The problem is that, while exploring the property, Sally discovers that this house has a basement that had been closed off and sealed up. Inside this basement is a furnace with a tunnel leading down into the earth's crust, and little rat-like demons emerge from this tunnel on a nightly basis. These demons live off of children's bones and teeth, and what do you know: there's a child in the house, ready and not quite willing to be consumed. They are feisty and creative beasts, but they do have one weakness: they can't stand light, so as long as you have a flashlight handy, you should be alright. Of course, the parents don't believe the child, and it becomes a race for the poor kid to convince them before the demons drag her down to the depths of hell and eat her.
The worst problem with the film by far is the lack of material found within. The first twenty minutes is devoted to the setup, which is perfectly acceptable and plays out nicely. The final twenty minutes shows the inevitable final battle between humans and demons, and while it was predictable as all hell, it's an obvious way to end the film and it works out well. The problem lays in the hour between those two chunks of running time, as it basically plays out like this: demons run around and come this close to capturing Sally, the parents barge in, Sally tells them about the demons, they tell her that she's just a dumb kid, they leave her alone and turn out the lights, and... repeat. Repeat over and over again with only minor changes - a change of scenery here, a disposable victim there.
The film really needed to be fleshed out more to make for an entertaining night, but sadly, that wasn't the case. Sure, they tried, I'll give them that. There are little pieces of plot thrown in about the previous owner of the house, there's something about the demons leaving coins for children's teeth in a demented take on the tooth fairy story, and there is even some drama as step-mother and daughter attempt to bond. Unfortunately, it's not enough, and truth be told, most of it is rather silly.
I will say this: the creatures themselves looked fantastic and were treated as true monsters. There's none of this "cute monster" crap, where they will be seen playing with toys or watching movies in a theater; no, these are real monsters who want nothing more than to eat a kid alive, and that is how they are presented throughout the movie. The special effects used to bring them to life were right on point, and watching a mob of them move in on their potential kill was a sight to see. Thumbs up for that element of the film, even though it wasn't enough to save the overall product.
I'll also say that Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes were decent enough in their leading roles. I'm not going to tell you that they were phenomenal, because they weren't, but I can't rightfully bitch about either of them either. They were there, they played their roles, and they did a fine job with them, but that's about it. I was pleasantly surprised by Bailee Madison though, as even though I normally hate child actors in a horror film, I felt that she did a great job with her role. She didn't drag the movie down as kids are usually apt to do in movies like this, and her performance actually brought the movie up a notch. Again, it wasn't enough to save the movie, but it did help.
Overall, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is getting a "pass" from me. Maybe the original movie was better and maybe it wasn't, but looking at this remake as a standalone film, I just couldn't get into it. It had some great effects and a good cast, but the writing just wasn't strong enough to make it all come together. I wouldn't say that it's a horrible film, but it's not really worth a rental either. 4/10.
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#1:
Lucid Dreams
- added January 13, 2012 at 10:07pm
Do you think if Guillermo del Toro directed it
that it would have been better?
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#2:
Chad
- added January 13, 2012 at 10:54pm
It couldn't have been much worse. The script was
the main problem though, so I guess it all comes
down to "did Troy Nixey follow it to the
letter, and if so, would del Toro have diverted
radically from it?"
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