Don't be Afraid of the Dark

I've long been a Guillermo DelToro booster. I saw Mimic in theaters and enjoyed it greatly. I followed his career catching up on Cronos and seeing The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth and both the Hellboy films as they were released and generally loving them all. It's been three long years since the spectacular Hellboy 2 and good old Guillermo's been attached to more films than Justin Timberlake women, yet nothing has materialised. Until now. Well, he only wrote the script for Don't Be afraid of the Dark, but his fingerprints are all over this thing from the fairy tale mythos to the nasty critters to the murals on the wall even down to the brocaded headboard on the child's bed! And you know what? This movie stinks. It's absolute junk. It's a wannabe high brow Charles Band feature at best. Just because DelToro has a notebook full of doodles doesn't mean he has to shoehorn them into a lackluster creature feature starring two disinterested adults and one homely little girl.

After a moderately promising prologue, we're introduced to the most milquetoast "movie couple" I've ever seen. The lack of chemistry is simply astonishing. Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes literally seem like they just met 2 minutes before filming.... in every scene they share!!! It never comes across as anything than what it is, Pearce slumming for a big paycheck and Holmes taking a token role to remind people she's actually an actress and not just Cruise's indentured wife. The little girl in this film serves as a stark reminder of how much DelToro lucked out finding Ivana baqero for Pan's labyrinth. The camera loved her, she had innate talent and copious screen charisma. I don't mean to bag on a little girl, so let's just say the child actor in Don't be afraid of the Dark is not someone you want to spend an hour and forty minutes following around. So, right off the bat, I can't buy into the lead couple's relationship which emotionally distances me from the film and I dislike the protagonist, making it difficult for me to care when she's imperiled.

And what is she put into peril by? Spoiler alert for those who care........ It's pretty much the tooth fairy creatures from Hellboy 2, but less cartoonish, more ugly and without wings. So now the movie is repetitive as well. These sort of mythical creatures with fairy tale roots have long been a DelToro staple to flavor his films (such as the aforementioned Hellboy 2 sequence, which lasted 10 minutes), here, it's the entire course! I was intrigued by the films advertising, eager to learn what this house's secret was. After discovering it was simply alternate versions of the 8 inch tall turds from Subspecies rendered in better graphics, well, needless to say, I was a little disappointed. Not only is the threat underwhelming and silly, it's revealed far too early in the story, leaving the film makers no option but to "treat" us to a dreary, seemingly endless parade of sequences where characters are in a dark room, then something is really loud, then they fend off CGI beasties by pointing flashlights at them (cause they can't stand the light, natch). Not exactly gripping stuff to this 34 year old man. I felt the same as I did watching Child's Play all those years ago, inwardly screaming, "Why don't you just kick them?!?!?!?".

This being a tiresome exercise in convention, we get treated to all the classics. Flashlights being smacked around by the protagonists, sputtering light during tense situations when they need it so desperately. The child droning on and on about the threat and no one believing her. The stepmother trying to side with her and doing research at the library to uncover the horrible truth. The child making creepy drawings etc... You name it, this movie trots it out, by the numbers and every bit as brain numbing as it sounds. I wanted to leave about an hour in, but realized I had nothing better to do at home, so I stuck it out, hoping against hope there would be some redeeming quality to mitigate DelToro's complicit guilt in penning this drivel, but there was to be none. Please Guillermo, I beg of you to return to the directors chair. Just please do so once you've settled on a project infinitely more ambitious and deserving of your talents than this utter waste.