Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Well, the dark used to be scary. The same goes for big gothic mansions. And little nasty creatures that live in the basement. I'm sure these things still possess the potential to be scary again, but none of these horror staples are effectively employed in the drab and pitifully ill-timed fright flick Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. Based on a TV movie that first aired back in 1973, this big-screen remake is powered by a simple setup that locates the narrative in familiar haunted house territory. When lonely young Sally (a somewhat capable Bailee Madison) is sent to spend time with her father (an often capable, though currently crappy Guy Pearce), she finds herself a guest at a mysterious Rhode Island house that dear old Dad and his girlfriend Kim (a borderline incapable Katie Holmes) are working on refurbishing in hopes of selling the property.
Selling isn't a bad idea, because as little Sally soon learns, a furnace in the previously hidden basement plays home to a group of vicious little creatures who insist on claiming a human life whenever they're released. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone (since when do cobwebby furnaces in gothic mansion basements house anything friendly?), but it's only Sally who believes in the creatures at first. And for a moment, there's a glimmer of something interesting in the plot. The creatures (hairy fairy things with gangly limbs and a penchant for sharp objects) begin calling out to Sally through grates in the wall. They whisper her name and attempt to appeal to her loneliness by commenting on how the adults don't want her, but the creatures sure do.
The notion of planting the narrative from Sally's perspective is a promising one, but it's also an avenue that is abandoned almost as quickly as it first appears. Sally soon figures out that the creatures are a bunch of bastards and that discovery kills all ambiguity from that point on. With a pile of celluloid left to project, the story stumbles into a horribly dull circle of repetition. Sally fears the creatures, who themselves fear the light, while Dad and Kim just wander around aimlessly and leave Sally to have close encounters of the frightless kind. There's hardly any progression in the plot for a huge stretch of the movie, because the character arcs are stagnant and the conflict barely explored.
There's supposed to be some sort of commentary on the challenges of parental control and the importance of believing your kid when they claim that tiny monsters are terrorizing them, but none of it is particularly interesting or insightful in this version. Producer and co-writer Guillermo del Toro is a fan of mixing themes of child neglect with horror-bound beasts, but he commits zero effort to the combination of theme and genre here. First-time director Troy Nixley is in foreign territory and he manages to botch almost every scare in the movie (only a trip under the bed sheets is worth a jolt). A sparkling debut this is not.
With the conflict intending to come from both the supernatural and the very natural, there should be plenty of room to establish tension and give Sally some juicy motivation. But it never comes to fruition on either side, instead leaving us with lame monsters that become less interesting with each extended glimpse and a generic father/daughter clash that feels forced and false. The acting is far too faulty to make a dramatic impression and so the potentially engaging plot of a little girl finding solace in the presence of monsters is a total bust. It doesn't help that far too much time is spent with Pearce and Holmes, who share no chemistry and are more irritating than entertaining.
They're hardly a believable couple at any stage of the narrative and listening to them chat about renovations is some sort of cinematic kryptonite. The movie dies a little whenever it wastes time in the vacuum that is these two characters and the wooden performances don't exactly give us any reason to care one bit about what the hell they're blabbing about. Plus, it doesn't matter! The adult characters are pretty much useless throughout and they only seem present out of necessity (Sally wandering around the house all by her lonesome would be really dumb, even by this movie's low standards of intelligence).
The hole left by the adult characters and the undeveloped parental themes they drag behind them is a considerable problem, but the movie should still be salvageable as a fright flick because it's really about Sally and those damn hairy fairies in the furnace. Nixley's rigid, unimaginative direction ruins that opportunity, though, as simple, scare-free camera setups extinguish the fear factor and put us in the role of spectator, as opposed to placing us in Sally's shoes. Monsters aren't very frightening when you keep seeing them before the protagonist does and when they start parading around in front of the camera, leaving every inch of their CGI bodies to be visible for long enough that their design loses all disturbing effect.
All of this nonsense adds up to a preposterous third act that requires the trio of main characters to all suddenly become absolute morons. None of them appear to be geniuses early on, but at least they appear to be functioning individuals. In order to wring a few more weak frights from the sour plot, del Toro, Nixley and other writer Matthew Robbins ensure that each character commit several idiotic mistakes as they fumble their way through the finale. It's a pitiful way to wrap up such a flabby flick that actually exhibited potential way back at the beginning.
Even with so many grand horror elements floating around in this putrid stew, there's next to nothing worth praising about the finished result. Madison does her best and she isn't necessarily awful, but she fails to tap into the relatable sense of childhood wonder that would make her character easier to swallow and to care for. To be fair, a lot of her problems originate with the script, which reduces Sally's arc to a simple adventure searching for meaning in the form of contrived emotions. The house is certainly the result of solid production design, but Nixley is unable to translate the archaic chilliness of the structure into gothic-fuelled thrills on the big screen. And the creatures, well, they're never too scary and they become significantly less interesting the more time we spend with them. So, as the title dares, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark! Okay! No problem here.
