Film review: Guillermo Del Toro’s “Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark”

From the moment both me and Gaby attended the panel for Film District at SDCC, and they showed a clip of ‘Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark‘, I was legit scared and covered my eyes for half of the clip, not wanting to be more frightened than what I already was. In my case, when it comes to a scary movie I hate them with every fiber of my being because they either don’t live up to my expectations and I spend half of the time laughing at the scary scenes, or they just scare me to death and in a way change my sleeping habits (thank you, ‘Paranormal Activity’, now I always think someone’s going to drag me out of my bed at night).

‘Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark’ is a film that had the potential to be extra scary and keep me frightened for months, but it just wasn’t there. After all the hype behind it, it dissapointed me because the back story is relatively good it just wasn’t scary as I expected it to be.

‘Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark‘ is the story about Sally (Bailee Madison) a girl who moves from her home in Los Angeles to Rhode Island to live with her dad Alex (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes). The house where they move to, Blackwood Manor, home of the dissapeared artist Emerson Blackwood, is basically Alex’s occupation at the moment: he bought the house, with the help of Kim they will remodel it and then sell it. As Sally finally moves with Alex, she feels distant from him and Kim, feeling as if her mom back in L.A abandoned her and gave her up to her dad. Upon first arriving to the house, Sally notices is vast size and she starts hearing voices calling her name. In the state of Rhode Island, apparently no basements exist, that is until Sally follows a voice that leads her to a hidden basement and there we find one of Blackwood’s latest paintings, as well as a sealed fireplace where the voices are coming from. Sally opens the fireplace, the voices telling promising her that they want to be her friend, and before she goes inside of it, Alex tells her to go back upstairs. Since the fireplace is now open, goblin-like creatures, little monsters, come out of the fireplace and they start to torment Sally, specially once the lights are off.

A series of bizarre events start to happen around the house, Alex’s razor goes missing, Kim’s shirts are all cut up, and both of them blame Sally for this thinking she’s doing it as an act of rebellion. Sally denies she has done such things, blaming that there are things in the house that are calling their name and following her at night, but both Alex and Kim don’t believe it. Sally spends most of the time either drawing the monster she has seen at night or walking around the house with a flashlight scared that they might come out of nowhere to attack her. Things start to get worse once one of the workers of the house is attacked by these goblin-like creatures that live in the dark that almost kill him. Once he is at the hospital, Kim goes to visit him to ask him what happened, he manages to say to get the girl out of the house immediately because whatever is there is after her. After doing some research at the local library about the Blackwood Manor, Kim realizes that most of Sally’s drawings are very similar to Blackwood’s last paintings, and after reading some of his material and how he described the monsters she realizes that what Sally described is actually true and Blackwood had seen it too before he dissapeared.

After attending both panels for ‘Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark‘ and ‘Pacific Rim‘ at SDCC, I know that Guillermo del Toro has certain appreciation for the creation of monsters and all different kinds of creatures from his imagination. The monsters were…okay, they were just tiny but I think that the voices made it seem funny and not really intimidating, I’m expecting blood all over the place and the monsters at the very least one of them to be terrifying, but nope, they’re miniature creatures that feed on kids teeth to replenish themselves. Not only that, the ending left the movie open for a sequel but I don’t know how they would make a sequel work out if this wasn’t horrifying as it seemed it would be. The movie being R rated is completely unnecessary, the only violence you would see is at the first scene of the movie and it isn’t even THAT bad, it could have been easily PG-13. The only thing that made the movie good was perhaps Bailee Madison’s acting which is exceptional for such a  young girl, but even that couldn’t save the movie from being a total dissapointment.

At any rate, I would recommend everyone to just wait to rent it because it was seriously a letdown for a scary movie, Guillermo del Toro, you’re an amazing director but this movie wasn’t your forte.