Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Oh, this is the stuff. How I’ve missed great horror. American studios have, by and large, ignored producing truly great horror over mindless pablum like Final Destination 6, or Saw 23, or Nostalgic Horror Film Remake 117. Slashers, gore-fests, dead teenager movies and all the other imagination-barren dreck neglect that incredible power a great horror film can wield over its viewer: namely, that it’s the only genre that can truly encompass every emotion, running the audience through the gamut so thoroughly that they’re exhausted and fully satisfied at the end.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a great horror film. I’d also rank it up there with the great fantasy films; dark fantasy, to be sure, as dark as it gets, but fantasy all the same. It’s a faery tale, with the a-e spelling, replete with faeries, an evil stepmother, a princess and a castle.

Oh, and what a castle it is: the film takes place in the dark, dusty confines of the gloriously decaying Blackwood Manor, a house into which reasonable people would never dream of entering, much less owning. Luckily for us, this faery tale is populated by and large with unreasonable people, for reasonable people have no place in faery tales.

Little Sally Hirst is sent to live with her father in Blackwood Manor, as her mother doesn’t want her anymore. Her father Alex (Guy Pearce) and his live-in girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes) are working on restoring the mansion to its former glory, it having been empty for the last hundred years. But Sally’s arrival awakens…things.

Lurking things.

Hungry things.

Little do Sally, Alex and Kim know the dark history of what happened to old Emerson Blackwood, and the secrets that the bolted-shut fireplace holds, or what has been unleashed at Blackwood Manor.

The tropes of the faery tales are both apparent and subverted here. Sally (Bailee Madison) is a withdrawn, sullen child, wise beyond her years and smart enough to know she’s been abandoned. Alex is a father who loves his dau...

Well, aside from a bit of a "Neighbours" reunion between Guy Pearce and Alan Dale, there's not really much to say about this film. Pearce is "Alex" who, with girlfriend "Kim" (Katie Holmes), has set up home in a stately pile where his daughter "Sally" (Bailee Madison) discovers an hitherto long sealed up cellar. Like most brats her age, she cannot leave well alone - despite warnings from the wary "Harris" (Jack Thompson) - a relative of the previous owner who disappeared under mysterious circumstances - and so soon she is reaping the rewards for her meddling. What now ensues reminded me of a well known Christmas film where you mustn't feed or water the baddies... Only this one comes with a load of frenetic screaming and hysteria that actually - especially the bath scene - had me praying for a quick, child-free, resolution to all of our problems. Guillermo del Toro may have written the screenplay, but in the hands of director Troy Nixey we are presented with a rather derivative storyline that isn't greatly served by a lacklustre Pearce and by the always over-rated Holmes whose acting career up a certain Creek really ought to have ended there. It's neither scary nor remotely original and the closing scenes elicited a far more menacing prospect than anything we see earlier. Might there be a sequel?? Sorry - one to watch and swiftly forget.