Mania Grade: B+

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Info:

• Starring: Guy Pearce, Katie Holmes, Bailee Madison and Jack Thompson
• Written by: Matthew Robbins and Guillermo del Toro
• Directed by: Troy Nixey
• Studio: Miramax
• Rating: R
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Series:

Mania Review: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

 Horror depends more on craftsmanship than perhaps any other genre in existence. Put it together elegantly enough and it always works: the scares hit at the right points, the atmosphere seeps into the audience’s bones, and the chills remain long enough to prompt a few uneasy glances at the bedroom closet before turning out the lights. Even the hoariest genre cliché can still function if presented with some style, and humble little shockers have a way of becoming minor classics if they do things right.

I’m not prepared to call Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark a classic, at least not yet. But it surely knows how to do its job with creativity and panache: courtesy of fledgling director Troy Nixey and a fellow named del Toro lurking in the wings. The basics rank among the oldest and most shopworn of horror tropes: a spooky old house, a child in danger and a threat that remains more shadow than substance.  But in the filmmakers’ hands, it becomes a delightfully spooky funhouse, more than up to the challenge of ushering the summer of 2011 to a close.

The story stems from an older made-for-TV movie about magical creatures that live in a cave beneath an old Gothic mansion. They come from the old school of fairies: the kind that feed on human teeth and periodically drag hapless humans down into their hellish domain. The house’s original owner was a renowned naturalist whose drawings took a turn for the Lovecraftian just before his untimely disappearance. His house sat abandoned for many years, but now renowned architect Alex Hurst (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes) have come to refurbish it. Soon, the architect’s young daughter Sally (Bailee Madison) arrives… and those things in the basement think they’ve found a new target.

The film’s success begins with the family dynamic, and the way it merges seamlessly with the more overt horror elements. Hurst loves his daughter, but is too preoccupied with the house to pay her much mind. Sally, in turn, feels abandoned by both parents… making her very vulnerable to the sinister whispers coming up from the ducts. It’s Kim who has to act as a surrogate mother – awkwardly at first, but with increasing urgency as the movie goes on. All three actors give solid performances (Madison’s is particularly vital for the film to work), and the relationship between them holds the film strongly during the various quiet spots.

Not that there’s many of those. The boggies in the basement make their move fairly quickly, and with Papa convinced that it’s all in her head, Sally needs to make a stand on her own. This is familiar territory for Guillermo del Toro, who often focuses on children in peril. But it works well here, thanks to Nixey’s creepy atmosphere and the sound decision to keep the creatures hidden until later in the proceedings.  Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark carries its share of gore, though it’s as artfully deployed as the remainder of the film: a sharp burst in the beginning, with the remainder focusing more on cringe-inducing body parts like tendons and eyeballs rather than buckets of blood. It lends the growing suspense a real kick, as well as accentuating the monsters’ nastiness and Sally’s desperate efforts to keep them at bay.

The film comes close to tripping at the end, when it appears to run out of gas right at the big showdown. But Nixey rebounds with a nicely unsettling epilogue that wraps the previous spooky thrills up in a neat little package. He never deviates from the target and never raises his sights beyond what is required to send a goose across our graves. He focuses his energy on making this the most effective engine it can be. In the process, he reminds us why all those old clichés worked so well and that there’s still life in them if people who love and respect the genre devote a little time to sprucing them up properly. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark shows us what a little care and attention in the right places can do: a notable achievement in a month normally bereft of them.