Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010) or, What Creeps in the Dark

♥♥♥♥

A creepy and neatly designed poster for Troy Nixey's Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

QUICK REVIEW:

A father and his new girlfriend renovate a large old house in Rhode Island, but his daughter wants to get out of there, because she sees beasts living in the cellar ...

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark presents neat art-work and production designs, (drawings, paintings, furniture and sets) and astute photography by Oliver Stapleton (Let Him Have It (1991)). The Blackwood inheritance of the film is a reference to horror writer Algernon Blackwood (The Centaur (1911)).
The script, by great Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro (The Devil's Backbone/El Espinoza del Diablo (2001)) and Matthew Robbins (Crimson Peak (2015)), based on Nigel McKeand's (For the Love of Nancy (1994)) teleplay for the ABC TV movie of the same name, has some problems; such as a librarian, who just so happens to be an expert on Blackwood, SPOILER and a gardener who dies violently without anyone raising any questions about his death.
Like in the great Spanish horror The Orphanage/El Orfanato (2007), SPOILER the mother of the film, here the likable Katie Holmes (The Extra Man (2010)), becomes a martyr, whereas the moronic father, played by Guy Pearce (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)), survives.
The film is directed by comic book artist Troy Nixen, who had impressed Toro to give him the job with his short Latchkey's Lament (2007).

In lieu of a trailer for the film, which is not currently on Youtube, here is its bombastic main theme

Cost: 25 mil. $
Box office: 36.9 mil. $
= Big flop
[Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was first screened at the Virginia Film Festival November 6 and runs 99 minutes. It was shot in Australia. Its release was mauled by its US production company Miramax's sale and failure to get the PG-13 rating it had sought for. The film's American release was pushed out for these reasons, to August 26, 2011. It grossed 24 mil. $ (73.2 % of the total gross) in North America, and the 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Mexico with 3.3 mil. $ (8.9 %) and the UK with 2 mil. $ (5.4 %). Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is rotten at 58 % with a 5.8 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

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