Max: Yeah it's great to be back, dude. Siked.
Mike: I know! We've got great things planned for the coming months. Of course, we had plenty of time to mull it over...didn't we, Max?
Max: Yes. We were kind of locked in the belfry.
Mike: Yeah...kind of. Funny how that happened.
Max: I don't know what you mean.
Mike: Sure you don't. Just like you didn't know that the keys to the door were in your pants pocket the WHOLE TIME! TWO WEEKS we were locked up there.
Max: I have a lot of things in my pockets, dude: credit cards, candy corns, keys, children's teeth....
Mike: Do you think our fans missed us?
*crickets chirp*
Mike: Anyway, we're back and things are going to get a whole lot more awesome around here. Starting with a review of a movie IN THEATERS RIGHT NOW!!!
Max: That’s right creeps! Be sure to stay tuned for the rest of the month as we honor Stephen King’s birthday! Throughout September, we constant readers of the balcony will be examining some of our favorite screen adaptations of his work.
Mike: So let’s get this corpse and ghoul show on the road, and roll our current feature!
Max: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is a modern gothic horror film that brings a new twist to an old (and scary) idea: nightmare creatures that prey upon children. Directed by Troy Nixey and written and produced by Guillermo Del Toro, director of Hellboy, Blade II, and the recent magical realist horror classic Pan's Labyrinth, this film (currently in theaters) really should have audiences jumping in their seats and nibbling their nails in response to an endless onslaught of scares. I say "should" because, in my opinion, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark did not succeed at this objective. As a matter of fact, the title of this film is quite appropriate, since there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Despite the involvement of the masterful Del Toro, a writer whose imagination definitely excels in the realm of childhood fantasy, this element of the story never comes across all the way. Would you tend to agree with that, Mike? I know we both thought the movie started out quite strong, but over the course of the narrative it seems to lose that feeling of wonder and suspense, no?
Mike: I completely agree. The beginning is very strong, especially the whole Victorian, dark woods, carriage thundering down a dirt road, camera shot that swoops in on this ominous looking mansion. Right away, I had this huge smile on my face, and just knew that I was going to love this film. When you see Mr. Blackwood for the first time, gums oozing blood from where he pulled his own teeth, and then pinning down the house maid to break her teeth out with a mallet and chisel, my jaw was hanging down by my chest (actually, it was sealed shut and my hands were covering it, because who wants to have their teeth torn from their mouth?). Then you hear the voices of the creatures coming from the fire stove, and the pleas from Mr. Blackwood's son echoing up from the pit that is hidden inside the stove. I was shaking a bit. All of this was great, and though I am not going to say the introduction to the modern era in which the movie really takes place is where the film starts to fall apart, but, in honestly, that's exactly what happens. Though the acting of Guy Pierce, Katie Holmes, Baily Madison, and the rest of the cast were really good, the story begins to lose that nightmarish atmosphere, and then disappears completely once we see the monsters in their entirety.
Max: Exactly. The voices that echo from the basement pit are super eerie. I also thought the fact that the basement was intentionally hidden from the rest of the house was really fun. The way Sally (Bailey Madison) discovers it by accident while playing was illustrative of that childhood sense of discovery. This theme is present in a lot of Del Toro's other work, like The Orphanage, for example, which he also produced. However, unlike The Orphanage (which ruled), Don't Be Afraid of the Dark doesn't hold its momentum. I think the reason for that, is like you said, they show us the little basement monsters in their entirety, and we see the tiny creatures very early on in the film. This completely ruins the suspense as to what they are and what they look like. It hurts the power of suggestion. Whatever happened to leaving a little bit to the imagination of the audience? Do we really need to immediately see the creatures in order to know how horrific they are? Maybe smaller glimpses would have sufficed.
Mike: Yes, smaller glimpses would have heightened the suspense. The most gripping scenes were the ones where you just saw their eyes or their hands coming out of the darkness, but once you see the creatures wholly, they become less terrifying. I suppose, if I were a small child and I watched this movie today, I would have pissed in my pants, but since the movie is rated 'R' and is geared towards adults, I found the reveal of the monsters (as early as a 4th of the way through the movie) to be quite disappointing. The creatures looked more menacing in the sketches and interpretations of the little girl and the old drawings that Mr. Blackwood had done. The artwork had a very dark-fairy tale feel that I think would have worked well if Jim Henson (R.I.P) had done this movie in the early to mid-eighties.
Max: Yup. Great point about the drawings. I kept thinking to myself the whole time I was watching this movie, why the hell are the girls drawings of the monsters scaring me so much more than the monsters themselves?! This was massively disappointing. Particularly considering that the creatures were supposed to be rabid tooth-fairies inspired by the great mystic author Arthur Machen. In my opinion, the creatures that Machen wrote about were some real abyssic beings, monsters that had dwelled in darkness for generations, the kind of things that Lovecraft would later insist were "too terrible to describe". If Del Toro and company wanted to play with beings from this particular realm of eternal blackness, why then, would they turn to such crappy CGI as a representation? I know that CGI is the "in" thing right now, but that doesn't mean that it should be the thing where these kinds of creatures are concerned. Jim Henson’s style puppets or animatronics would have really helped out in this case.
Mike: CGI isn't "in,” it's the industry standard. I'm willing to give credit to the innovativeness of CGI, and admit that it has done some pretty cool things when it is used appropriately. However, I really feel that the horror genre as a whole would benefit more if CGI was used less to none at all. Del Toro did an amazing job with CGI and puppetry in Pan's Labyrinth, and I think that if the same sort of care was applied to this film--a mix of both wouldn't have been bad, in my opinion--then the movie would have succeeded in creating monsters that correlate within the established dark atmosphere. With that said, it's not just the CGI that gets under my skin it's also the one dimensional characters in the film that drag this movie down. Again, I say that the acting was really good, but good acting can't save shallow characters and poorly tossed in plot points. The dad, Alex, played by Guy Pierce, is the typical unyielding nay-sayer who has no time for his daughter or her fanciful nightmares (no matter how real they seem to her), and would rather brush off all of the craziness going on around him just so he can concentrate on saving his career. I mean, he doesn't even begin to at least question the events going on. There's more to this, but I think I'll let you handle it, and spare our readers from my long tirade.
Max: True. As much as all the acting was quite good, there are, as you mentioned, some issues with the way the characters are written, as well as with the script as a whole. Katie Holmes brings a lot to the table as Alex’s girlfriend, Kim. She seems legitimately sympathetic to Sally's fear and belief in the creatures and she does her part to follow up on Sally's story. But why on earth does Kim need to have a long bedside exchange with the injured groundskeeper Mr. Harris (who is not dying, just injured). Nothing is revealed in this conversation of theirs, even though we know that Harris knows everything about the creatures, he was just attacked by them for fucks sake. Instead Harris is vague to the point of cliché, and tells Kim to visit the library and ask for lot number such and such where the story will be revealed. Cut to the library and Katie Holmes asking for said lot number. This is all just very redundant to me, and I think if the script was a little tighter, this information could have been obtained in the span of one scene. Say, from Harris, on his hospital bed.
Mike: I also have a qualm with how willing Sally is to go deeper and deeper into the darkness, and into these extremely creepy places to play with these voices that call to her. As a child, I would have investigated the voices calling to me, but as soon as they lead me down the stairs to a dark, dank basement, I would have high-tailed it out of there faster than a dog with its ass on fire. I know that I have to allow myself, for the sake of the film, to believe that she just has a really relaxed and genuine child's curiosity, but I still have to ask, to what extent is this believable?
Max: Agreed. I think that the situation with Sally courting the creepy-ass voice is just flat out unbelievable. I would actually be willing to overlook that, if it weren't for the rest of the movie continuing to disappoint.
Mike: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark has a great concept: the tooth fairies are terrifying, vicious, little monsters that feast on the bones of children's teeth. It has Arthur Machen lore and aesthetically appealing Victorian-gothic setting. Unfortunately, my film viewing experiences have taught me that big ideas, within a film context, are usually poorly executed. There are some gems out there, but more often than not the concepts are misshapen and uncared for.
Max: Very good point. That being said, I think it's time for us to weigh in with our bloody nubs. As Mike has pointed out, this film did have a great foundation and concept. Based on the first few minutes I expected great things. Instead, I thought Don't Be Afraid of the Dark delivered a lot of anti-suspense, leading up to a giant anti-climax. I find it strange that I enjoyed Insidious more than I enjoyed this movie, but amazingly, I did. This was a major let down and I'm pointing both of my nubs in that direction as well.
Mike: The first few minutes of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark are worth watching, and might even send chilling tingles down your spine. I think that you'll agree that the concept of the film is solid and well worth investigating similar tales found in literary folk-lore. But the first few minutes are the ONLY few minutes I can really recommend you watching. The rest of the movie is a disappointment, and I won't even go into the ending and the out-of-context conclusion that we are left to digest. I'm not giving up on Del Toro (I do like a lot of his films), but I am saddened by this latest writing endeavor of his. I'm giving this movie two nubs down, as well.
Max: Yeah, that ending, WTF? No context whatsoever.
Max: Oh well...back to the belfry.
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