So many posters – all better than the film…
Like the title itself says Don’t be afraid of the Dark, and don’t worry this film won’t give you much reason to.
When an architect Alex (Guy Pearce) and his interior designer fiancé Kim (Katie Holmes) move Alex’s daughter from a former marriage Sally into their huge fixer-upper estate for some bonding time, Alex sees it as a chance for Kim and Sally to forge a quasi mother/daughter relationship. And a chance to ‘save’ Kim from her overbearing, over protective Mother.
But Sally resents both her new surroundings and the sense that she is but a problem to be handballed away, she shuts both Alex and Kim out and stays in her room for the most part.
But a child’s bedroom is small, and the estate is immense and enticing, with Alex and Kim nearly finished their vast renovations and refurbishment (a project that they hope will be set them up for life by being featured on the cover of a prominent architectural magazine). Eventually the allure of discovery drags Sally outside, where despite the gruff rumblings of the supervisor Mr Harris (Jack Thompson) that this home ‘ain’t safe fer kids’ she manages to uncover an entire new area of the residence hidden under the main building.
Oh Dora, I knew your exploring would eventually lead to trouble…
The trouble for Sally starts with voices. Voices only she can hear. Voices that implore her from behind a bolted grate to ‘come and play’. Of course despite the protestations of most in the cinema audience Sally does just that, leading to an infestation of sorts behind and beneath the walls and floorboards of the building – always at night.
An infestation that Morbo from Futurama might describe as numerous and belligerent.
From here we cue up the horror movie cliché bingo; the scene in the bathtub, in the bed, the hiding under the sheets, the trip to the library for disturbing news, the dopey, stubborn parent who refuses to believe…
Speaking of dopey parents, Alex is indeed dopier than most. When a man nearly dies by a thousand tiny cuts in his own building he writes it off as an accident, when his own daughter clearly (and frequently) describes her reasons for fear he ignores them as symptoms of an active child’s mind. Katie Holmes as Kim on the other hand has no excuse, I would have thought that being married to an intense, diminutive, fiendishly evil goblin for a decade would have taught her how to handle herself better…
In any case Don’t be afraid of the Dark is fairly formulaic fare despite the presence of Guillermo Del Toro behind the scenes, in the end while it wants to be a companion piece to The Gate, the 80’s teen friendly horror flick is scarier, funnier and just plain better than this film.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. It’s a movie alright, but a movie with precious few virtues to extol, and not one which will cause you any lasting nyctophobia (fear of the dark).
P.S. As an Australian it is obvious early and often that this film was made here and features a great many familiar faces as supporting actors. This isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, just a thing.
