Movie Review: Don’t be Afraid of the Dark
Kind of a surprising week. I thought I was going to love Colombiana and was really disappointed. I kind of thought this was going to be yet another dumb ass horror movie and loved it.
Don’t be Afraid of the Dark is, in my less than humble opinion, the best horror movie this year. It is super creepy, the terror builds up over time, and you honestly care about the characters and are worried about what is going to happen to them. Best of all, it does not at all rely on slasher gore or body count. There is actually very little death, and yet somehow it comes across as more horrible than some maniac running across town with a chainsaw.
This actually got me thinking quite a bit about horror and why movies like this work so well when every teenage slasher film leaves me bored (Texas Chainsaw Massacre image courtesy of the horror movie t shirt category). Some good examples of movies low body count thinking horror would be the Shining and the Ring. I think it is several levels. First of all, when we are introduced to 10 different teenyboppers who are all destined to die on the edge of a machete we can never really develop any kind of connection with them. The movie starts off with us knowing that most of them are going to die in ridiculous ways and the only thing we do is try to figure out which of them is going to survive (typically the hottish, nerd girl. See, ladies? There are serious advantages to being a girl nerd. Join us on the nerd side). In a movie where we are only given a couple of characters and have to interact with them throughout the film, especially when one of them is an innocent and troubled child or equally sympathetic character, we the audience really start to care and worry about them. I was on the edge of my seat hoping the little girl in this film made it out OK.
The other thing that makes films like this work my personal theory of concept horror verses hind brain horror. A maniac running around killing people with a glove full of knives is more of a hind brain, adrenalin rush film that is designed to trigger your fight-or-flight response. The problem is you get desensitized to it pretty quick. The spiky adrenalin rush you feel from Freddy’s first kill fades to almost boredom by the tenth, and then if you see the next sequel in turn (or even another slasher film) you are more or less over the whole idea and at that point you are more into seeing what kind of creative ways the director can come up with for the next kill. In most cases it devolves into almost comedy. In a concept horror film, the director lets your own imagination terrify you. We are always better at scaring ourselves when given the chance. As a child I was absolutely convinced there was a crocodile living on the floor of my room at night and he would bite off any part of my body I dared stick beyond the edge of my bed (my parents had him relocated to a zoo as my eleventh birthday present. Thanks, mom and dad). That is real horror. In films like this the story presents you with a creepy situation and then lets your imagination run with it. What are those monsters? What do they really want? What are they going to do with that girl? Your brain keeps feeding you worse and worse scenarios.
Not that this movie doesn’t have it’s problems. For one thing, the main bulk of the story we have all seen before. A lonely and troubled child in a huge, creepy mansion is beset by supernatural terrors while her parents remain blithely and almost willfully ignorant. Another thing is the creatures, who start off terrifying and mysterious, get more and more exposed as the film progresses and take on a comedic aspect. Fortunately by that time your connection with the young girl and the two adults is strong enough to carry through. Not even sure they could have avoided that, as they had to show them sometime. Finally, while I was extremely sympathetic and liked the little girl a lot, she was dumber than a sack of hammers. Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I can’t think there was ever an age where I was dumb enough to stick my head into a dark culvert in a super creepy basement just because some evil sounding voice told me to. Of course my childhood is no barometer for average children’s behavior, but still.
Anyway, the move. A very young Sally (played brilliantly by Bailee Madison. Where do these great child actors keep coming from? I predict impressive things from this young lady coming up) is being sent off by her more or less negligent party mother to live with her father Alex (Guy Pearce, the Hurt Locker, L.A. Confidential, Momento) and his girlfriend Kim (played by Scientology weirdo Katie Holmes. You know, I always thought she would have a more impressive film biography, but except for Batman Begins and Dawsons Creek she has been in nothing but crap. Oh, wait. Thank you for Smoking was pretty good too) in their super creepy fixer-upper mansion. Sorry, but if some real estate agent shows you a house and the front door is carved to look like a giant Japanese Manga squid monster attacking, punch him in the face and then try to run him over in your car as you leave. This place made the House on Haunting Hill look like Peewee’s Playhouse (also kind of creepy, but for other reasons). Anyway, Alex is some kind of architect who is down on his luck and has invested every dime in restoring this old house in an attempt to get it on the cover of Architectural Digest. We are never told why his career tanked or how this magazine cover will save it and, to be honest, it kind of bugged me. Kim is his interior decorator/live in girlfriend who is trying to form an attachment with Sally, who really wants nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, you hear creepy voices and see the green glowing eyes of dozens of rat sized creatures in a metal grate in the even creepier basement. They convince Sally to open the grate. They are afraid of bright light, so we are treated to all kinds of cool lighting for effect shots. They want to kidnap and probably kill Sally. The entire rest of the film is them stalking Sally while her dad and Kim believe she is having some kind of mental breakdown. Honestly, there isn’t much more I want to tell you about the story, as it would be quite the spoiler and I think you should all see this.
The stars. Super, duper, awesomely terrifying and creepy. Three stars. Amazing camera and lighting effects. Two stars. Bailee Madison was freaking awesome. Two stars. The creatures, once you saw them, were really cool and creepy with good CGI. One star. A horror movie that relies on story and great camera work rather than body count to make the horror happen. One star. The set was really well done also. One star. Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes were both pretty good. One star. A rated R movie that didn’t need gore and/or nudity (although I was hopeful). One star. Great ending with a cool twist. One star. Two more stars for a great movie experience. Total: fifteen stars.
The black holes. Sally’s bad decision making process kind of bummed me out. One black hole. The fact that we never find out why Alex is in such desperate straits with regards to his career when it is such a critical plot point that they remain in Creepy Mansion was annoying. One black hole. We also never find out what was up with party mom, which was also a key plot point. One black hole. Alex’s inability to listen to the serious needs of his child (even if she were imagining the creatures and they weren’t really alive, this is some serious crap any responsible parent would have to at least pay attention to her) really made me lose most of my sympathy for him. One black hole. There was a definite moment where any rational person would have bugged the hell out and set fire to the place as they left, but they didn’t. One black hole. Too much exposure to the creatures made them lose a lot of their menace towards the end. One black hole. Total: six black hole.
In the irksome category I will say this film is extremely derivative of a bunch of other films, particularly the Shining. This doesn’t get a black hole because it is an extremely good derivative and, honestly, there are so many movies out these days that it is nigh impossible to come out with something that doesn’t smack of something else.
A grand total of nine stars, a great score and at least 4-5 higher than I would have thought it would get when I was waiting on line to get my popcorn. I highly recommend you all see it if you are looking for a thrill. This, by the way, is a great date film in that it is not a slasher, has a very sympathetic little girl, and if your date isn’t clutching your arm and/or climbing into your lap by the end of it I would check her afterward to make sure her robot batteries are fully charged.
By the way, follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Fun!
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