TV movies from the 1970s could be pretty scary.
Mawkish plots. Shoddy production values. Trite acting.
That’s what made “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” different. The 1973 teleplay was intentionally frightening with an ending that gnawed at you long after your cathode ray TV set blinked off.
The remake, “presented” by Guillermo del Toro, shrewdly sticks to the original template with one age switcheroo. But while the film boasts a far bigger budget and 21st century effects, its characters behave rather badly. Your average slasher movie victim has more brain power than anyone in the new “Dark’s” cast.
Young Sally (Bailee Madison, “Just Go With It’) flies cross country to live with her architect pappy (Guy Pearce) and his young girlfriend (Katie Holmes). The poor girl is an emotional wreck, although we’re never told exactly why she got shuffled between parents.
Sally tries to make herself at home in her father’s house, a mansion he plans to fix and flip for profit. The girl stumbles onto a secret basement space where odd, murmuring voices command her attention. Does she run screaming to her father or even record the voices on her iPod? Noooo. She keeps visiting the basement and even pries off the grate that covers an old furnace from where those voices are emanating.
Soon, the beasties are scrambling around the house and paying Sally nightly visits, and she learns they don’t have her best interest at heart.
Horror movie fans can process stupidity. They have to, given how dopey many horror movie characters tend to be. Where would films like “Poltergeist” be if the characters fled the house at the first sign of mischief?
But stupidity overwhelms “Dark” at nearly every turn. One critical scene is such a head-scratcher it’s a wonder the film’s gaffer didn’t burst onto the set and say, “hey, guys, you do realize this doesn’t make a lick of sense, right? Right?”
What’s worse is how “Dark” treats the audience. Nearly every plot turn demands a leap of faith, a strained bit of behavior or, in the case of the film’s final reel, the appearance of a Mr. Exposition Man who details the whole story down to the letter.
Isn’t anyone the slightest bit curious why the handyman nearly died in the house’s basement?
“Dark” mimics the creepy, sing-song cadences of the original film’s critter chorus, and the movie’s score is an adroit blend of horror soundtracks old and new. First-time director Troy Nixey stages the early shocks with care and treats the mansion like the eerie character it is. Even the film’s prologue delivers a jolt. But Nixey can’t do much with the screenplay, co-written by del Toro. It gives Pearce nothing to do save be selfish and in denial, and it hints as a back story for Holmes’ character but quickly abandons it.
That leaves Madison’s Sally to anchor the film, and she does so beautifully. In the original, the Sally character was played by the adult Kim Darby, but making her a pre-teen makes perfect sense here.
If “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” coaxes modern audiences to give a ’70s relic a view, it’ll be worth swallowing all these plot contrivances and dopey characters.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
The problem with many horror films is that they tend not to stand out. The plots are contrived and require a large amount of suspended disbelief in order to work. That said, when I heard about this I thought it might be worth a look. I may even see it anyway just to see how it compares to the original.
I need to see the original again – loved it as a child, but I’m guessing much of it won’t hold up??
Horror movie fans are used to suspending disbelief, but “Dark” asks too much of us.
The original haunted me for many years–probably because it was the first horror movie I can remember seeing. When I first got the internet, I spent many hours trying to find the name of the movie, based on the keywords “little monsters” and “flashbulbs,” which is all I could remember about the movie.
The last time I checked, the original wasn’t out on DVD. Anybody know if it’s available again?
I think I’ll wait until “Bill of the Bull’s” cockroach fetish is cured to start seeing this highly overrated moviemaker’s work. I assume there are cockroaches somewhere in the movie?
You write, “One critical scene is such a head-scratcher….”
I have to ask, which scene do you have in mind? Not because I can’t identify one – but because I can identify several.
“Isn’t anyone the slightest bit curious why the handyman nearly died in the house’s basement?”
He had an “accident”. You’ve never fallen down in your basement and ended up with fifty or sixty stab wounds and lacerations all over your body from various sharp instruments?