Movie Review - Dont be Afraid of The Dark
Steve Granitz/WireImage(NEW YORK) -- Real life can be scary enough, so if you’re going to make a scary movie, you better bring it -- especially if it's a remake, or “reimagining,” as Hollywood likes to say. No such luck here.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a remake of the cult 1973 TV movie of the same name, is about as scary as a bunny rabbit making out with a sunflower. The only person who really deserves credit here is young Bailee Madison, a fantastic little actress who improves with every movie she’s in. Unfortunately, a dumb script does her and the rest of the cast an incredible disservice.
Sure, there is an outside chance you will find the antagonists in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark scary. The whispering little creatures are a cross between the critter from the Alien parody in Spaceballs and the subject in Edvard Munch's painting “The Scream” -- just picture the mask the bad guy wears in the movie Scream. However, you have to develop empathy for the good guys to really fear for them, and neither Guy Pierce nor Katie Holmes, through no fault of their own, win sympathy points here.
Guillermo del Toro, the genius behind Pan's Labyrinth, co-wrote and produced this film, which makes the final result even more disappointing. The film seems to showcase a complete lack of understanding of human behavior. Nothing in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark rings true. That may sound like every other horror movie Hollywood churns out but many of them are still capable of consistently executing horror movie clichés well enough to scare us. Again, no such luck here.