Movie review: Haunted house reno

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Bailee Madison in Don't be Afraid of the Dark (CP)

Movie review

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

• Starring Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce
• Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne
• 14A
• 100 minutes
• 3 stars out of five

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Guy Pearce (POSTMEDIA)

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Katie Holmes (POSTMEDIA)

Cinematic horror evolves and mutates over years.

It is for this reason that a movie such as Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, terrified audiences to paralysis in 1931, when it was released. To contemporary audiences, it could safely be employed as a narcotic sleep aid.

Nevertheless, some filmmakers can't help but return to the well when it comes to the movies that inspired them.

Producer Guillermo del Toro, himself the director of a few scary films such as Cronos and The Devil's Backbone, turns back the clock with Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, a remake of a 1973 TV movie of the same name about a house infested by malevolent, whispering, goblin-like entities of evil intent. When he was a kid, del Toro was scared out of his Oshkosh B'Goshes by the movie and thus resolved to give it a lush update under the helm of first-time director (and comic-book author) Troy Nixey.

The script by del Toro and Matthew Robbins centres the goblins' attention not on a grown woman, as in the original, but young Sally Hirst (Bailee Madison). Ping-ponged between her two divorced parents, Sally finds herself in the custody of dad Alex (Guy Pearce), who happens to be in the middle of renovating an old Gothic house, once the domain of a celebrated 19th-century nature painter. Sally's misery is compounded by the presence of Kim (Katie Holmes), dad's new girlfriend and an interior decorator equally focused on getting the house on the cover of Architectural Digest in a bid to mutually secure their careers.

Little Sally explores the grounds and discovers a walled-off basement in which a small iron door leads to a narrow subterranean pit. The discovery especially alarms crusty handyman Harris (Jack Thompson), who has some inside knowledge about the estate's sinister history, including the mystery surrounding the aforementioned artist. (We happen to be privy to the artist's fate via a tense opening sequence involving chillingly unorthodox dentistry.)

Sally is initially beguiled by the creatures, who insist they want to play with the little girl, but soon she realizes they have twisted notions of fun and games, beginning with an act of vandalism against Kim, and ramped up with an assault on Harris.

In the original film, the creatures looked like masked Muppets. The update increases the chill factor with its population of scuttling CGI creatures. (The scene in which Sally takes a flashlight under her bedsheets to check for little invaders results in a deliciously creepy moment of primal terror.)

Yet the film's pleasures are decidedly old-school. The film's dynamics are very much rooted in well-worn horror traditions: the old, dark house; a malevolent, ancient presence; an unreliable juvenile witness who has trouble getting adults to believe her...

It's so old-fashioned, the film may lose some of its impact on those jaded moviegoers (not to mention movie critics) who may be too familiar with well-travelled horror tropes.

But that is part of its charm, too. Indeed, the film's emphasis on characters and spooky, dark-and-stormy-night atmosphere should feel vibrant and new to a generation weaned on shot-on-video haunted houses and wall-to-wall blood spatter.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Movie review

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Starring Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce
14A
100 minutes
3 stars out of five

Other voices

Selected excerpts from reviews of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

If the grand finale isn't as resonantly scary as the original's, maybe that's just because, try though we might, we're no longer impressionable kids.

-- Chuck Wilson, Village Voice

...the moviemakers are refurbishing an older, shabbier piece of workmanship -- and it's a welcome enough place to stay for a few hours.

-- James Rocchi, MSN Movies

A scary film where the scares peter out far too quickly.

-- Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

The tension del Toro and Nixey create promises much more than it delivers.

-- David Germain, The Associated Press

A suspenseful yet markedly less insidious update.

-- Peter Debruge, Variety

What this film really needs is a good exterminator, or a better director.

-- Alexandra Cavallo, Boston Phoenix

Mixes some old-fashioned spine-tingling scares in with a decidedly new spine to be tingled.

-- Stephen Saito, Premiere magazine

You definitely get your money's worth in several scenes of full-on little armies stabbing and grabbing.

-- Fred Topel, Screen Junkies

-- Compiled by Shane Minkin

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 26, 2011 D1