FrightFest 2011 Review: DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK

rating: 2.5

Though producer and co-writer Guillermo Del Toro couldn't be at this year's Frightfest for the UK premiere of the opening film, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (as he is prepping his much-anticipated monster pic Pacific Rim), he did deliver a brief recorded message prior to the screening. Firstly, he warned the audience that the film is not-so gory (before apologising to the audience of bloodthirsty horror hounds), and then informed us that it received an R-rating in the U.S. for "pervasive scariness". Looking at the end product, it's difficult to see what the MPAA was fussing about, because this well-photographed horror is otherwise mostly dull and virtually scare-free. A welcoming tone is set from the outset, at least; an opening scene involves a maid having her teeth smashed in with a hammer, and director Troy Nixey keenly employs disgusting sound effects while keeping the bloody imagery minimal. Though this suggests that he has successfully aped the style and tone of decades-old horrors, the problem essentially is that he might have just done it too well without a single lick of irony. Crucially, as audiences have toughened up, the film reaches for the same old scare tactics which have worn audiences well weary by now, chiefly jump scares you can set to a metronome, a bombastic, portentous score and plenty of screaming. The premise revolves around an awkward family unit consisting of father Alex (Guy Pearce), his daughter Sally (Bailee Madison) and Alex's girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes). The three move into a rusty old house which Alex is renovating with the hope of selling, and in the basement Sally discovers a group of small imp-like creatures which dare her to come play with them. The creatures' patience soon wears thin, though, and they take matters into their own hands, entering the home, attacking Sally and causing her father to think she's crazy, while Kim, the less skeptical parental figure, tries to use this episode to forge a friendship. Regrettably, the film doesn't even dare to indulge its overly familiar haunted house premise with the full measure of madness; instead it painstakingly rattles through genre tropes like its livelihood depends on it, while keeping the energy low and just about every turn predictable, and that's not just because it's a remake of a relatively obscure 1970s TV film. It's a shame more effort hasn't gone into the script because it has visual flair aplenty and Nixey genuinely captures some of that old-guard spirit. Instead, all that style suffocates under old-hat chills which deny the characters agency and the audience any way to get involved with them, all the more unfortunate as the acting is uniformly solid, especially by Holmes and Madison. The antics of the daughter crying monster while her parents doubt her is little new and becomes boring fast; it's a dynamic used too often as a crutch for the scares, when instead the juxtaposition of the difficult family unit with their crumbling home should be a potent, stirring metaphor in of itself. Only at the climax does Nixey adequately ramp up the thrill factor, but it's still not scary and even with the fatal consequences of the final attack, it crucially fails to place a focus upon the family, which has been a winning formula for so many horrors of the period that this film is trying to replicate. It's all very good-looking and you don't need gore to sell a good horror flick, but you do need something in its place, like suspense. You won't be afraid of this film. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is released in the U.S. today and on October 7th in the U.K.