Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Review

In an old, storied house, a young child struggles nightly to survive the dreaded darkness and the terrors it holds; the terrors that are consistently yet temporarily vanquished upon the rising of the sun.  The child recounts the tales of nocturnal torment to any adult willing to listen, but children, prone to flights of fancy, are rarely listened to and even less frequently considered when the adults have adult things to consider.

This setup is a very common trope amongst horror films seen most recently in James Wan's Insidious and perhaps most relevantly in Guillermo del Toro's Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth.  What's supposed to separate Don't Be Afraid of the Dark from other horror films though, is that this one carries the del Toro seal of approval having been co-written and produced by the jovial fantasy fanatic.  Though directing duties have been handed to feature-length newcomer Troy Nixey, fans of the Mexican writer/director/producer's work will see his fingerprints all over the film in both good and bad ways.

In Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, the beleaguered child is Sally (Bailee Madison), a precocious young girl who, thanks to divorce, gets sent to live with her father, Alex (Guy Pearce), and his interior designer girlfriend, Kim (Katie Holmes), in a gothic Rhode Island mansion that once belonged to an artist who inexplicably disappeared months after his son's equally mysterious disappearance in the early 1900s.  The history of the house doesn't concern the two parental figures as much as restoring the majesty of its original construction does.  There's a cover story for an architectural magazine at stake, after all.

The history doesn't concern Sally either at first, though the present quickly begins to when a multitude of voices begin to call her name from behind a fireplace flue in a decrepit basement that's not supposed to exist.  They say they want to be friends.  They say her parents don't love her.  They say she should come down to the basement.  Without friends and homesick, Sally does go down to the basement and opens the flue, but what's released has no intentions of being friendly. 

So for all those who have been following along so far, get out your Guillermo del Toro checklist:

– A child/child-like protagonist with corresponding child-like naivety: Check

– General unhelpfulness/ignorance of parental figures: Check

– Ancient fantasy elements brought into a modern day setting: Check

– A premise set up to deliver equal parts horror and wonder: Check

Great.  So we're well on our way to another project involving del Toro that's sure to terrify us with its horrific exterior while simultaneously warming us with its heart.  But look a little further down the checklist and we've also got:

– Incredibly clunky relationships: Check

– A tenuous grasp on dialogue spoken by actual adults: Check

– An inherent reliance on the fantastical elements to overshadow the bland realistic elements: Check

I realize I'm talking as though del Toro directed Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and I realize, obviously, that he didn't, but many of both the strengths and flaws of the film come into play at the script level.  The film belongs to Bailee Madison and she dominates the material given to her, but unfortunately, most of the material involves her crying and screaming in reaction to CGI threats while Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes lackadaisically commit to responding as adults would. 

Perhaps the conflict would resonate more if the narrative were helped along by any sort of tension building, but there's only so many times that Nixey can return to the "nothing happens except for whispers" gag before it gets old.  You see, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is not just the film's title, but also a worthwhile suggestion.  At first, the echoing, seemingly omnipresent voices are chilling and creepy, but the entire premise of the film hinges on whether you believe that a young girl would follow disembodied voices into a dank basement.  Call me crazy, but no matter how lonely I ever was as a kid, I would've still been hesitant to listen to the lure of unidentified voices coming from a fireplace.  But then again, Guillermo del Toro had no bearing on my childhood.  If he had, perhaps my life wouldn't have lived up to the inherent promise either.