Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

Most kids, when they hear a creepy whisper coming from deep inside a forbidden basement and saying things like "We just want to be your friends," and "Come down here and see what it's like," would run screaming. Bailee Madison, who plays the little girl named Sally in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, is much braver than most kids. She is willing to investigate strange noises in the night. She even turns off her bedroom lights on command. Her father and his girlfriend, Guy Pierce and Katie Holmes respectively, have been fixing up this old house where nobody has lived for a very long time. The last time somebody lived there, the guy's kid was snatched away by a group of goblins that live in the basement and feed on the teeth of children. Now they have been released by the curious Sally and are determined to do dreadful things to her.

Guillermo del Toro is well-known to have an extreme interest in scary stories. He's already had a hand in bringing several to the big screen, and these are often enormously effective thrillers made mostly of atmosphere and weirdness rather than guts and gore. Though del Toro did not direct Don't be Afraid of the Dark, he did write the screenplay based on a 1973 TV movie that he saw as a young boy, and he also serves as producer. Though he wasn't involved all that much in the creative process of making this particular production, his fingerprints can be found all over it. It was directed by Troy Nixey, a comic book artist, and this is actually his first film. As a beginner with literally no motion picture experience, I must say this is an exceptional first take. This is an entertaining movie that does not depend solely on scares. It is scary to be sure, but in more of a fairy tale way than the R rating would suggest. In fact, if it wouldn't scar them forever, there isn't anything actually inappropriate for children. The villains are basically evil tooth fairies anyway. Make up some moral about brushing your teeth and you've got the perfect thing to show them when they've upset you.

Though the adults do well in their parts as the parent figures that think their child is a wacko, little Bailee Madison is the star of the show. She is a wonderful child actor who hopefully has a future ahead of her, and she is so adorable it makes the violent attacks on her more intense than they would have been if she had been an adult, like in the original. The execution of this movie is so superb, though, that even when the goblins do attack a grown-up, it is frightening. This does bring me to my one real issue with this otherwise exemplary horror story, and that is the goblins themselves. At first they are just whispers in the dark, which is their scariest form. Then we start seeing their shadows crawl across the screen, which is also acceptable. Then they start jumping at the camera, which comes across a little cheap. By the end, we have seen extended close-up shots of the computer-animated critters themselves, and they are not very frightening. This is because a computer can only show so much, when our imagination could have made things more unsettling. The final scene of violence would have been far more disturbing if we could not have so clearly seen who was doing it.

What are essentially minor quibbles aside, I was very impressed with this little fright-fest. It bothers to take its time telling an actual story and letting us into the characters' lives, even if it is just a little girl. She's more intelligent than the teenagers in most horror movies. Suspenseful films depend entirely on timing; on the build-up of terror. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark has all the patience necessary to do things right.

9/10