“Children’s teeth! Children’s teeth!” Unseen, spooky critters hiding deep in a fireplace in a walled-off room whisper these words like steam pipes. As they do, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” will turn your nerve endings to Popsicles.
This fantastically creepy haunted-house yarn, produced and co-written by Guillermo Del Toro and directed with terrifying flair by comic-book artist Troy Nixey, harks back to a 1960s idea of what a horror film should be. (It’s a remake of a 1973 TV movie that starred Kim Darby.) Before the slasher flick came along, the scarefest was all about unease and the uncanny, with maybe two minutes of violence in the whole production. It was plenty.
So we get a teddy bear that starts to move (“I love you! I love you!”), an internally lit carousel on a bed table that casts shadows that devour the walls — and those skittering sprites, under the bed or in the ventilation ducts, telling a 9-year-old girl, “We waaaant to be your frieeeeeend!” The tension gets to the point that the mere sight of a maid drawing a bath is enough to creep you out.
The girl, Sally (an excellent Bailee Madison), has just left her mom in LA to move into a crumbling Rhode Island mansion being refurbished by her architect dad, Alex (Guy Pearce), and his new girlfriend, Kim (Katie Holmes). Alex is broke, having sunk his last cent into this project, which he hopes will win him the cover of Architectural Digest. This house is more likely to make the cover of Fangoria.
Sally, who, thanks to her overprotective mom, is an Adderall-stuffed gluten-phobe, is already frazzled around the edges. It’s understandable that she might have unpleasant dreams, and Alex is slow to recognize that she’s being terrorized by tiny demons. In a prologue set in olden days, we learn why. A previous owner of the house couldn’t satisfy the wee beasties’ craving for children’s teeth. Adult teeth won’t do.
Nixey tightens the suspense at every opportunity, roaming the property’s slightly seedy hedges and dim hallways while keeping the colors muted and bleary. Outdoors it always seems to be about 5 p.m. in October. Inside, you’ll be begging for halogen track lights. We don’t get a good look at the little monsters — until we do, and they look like the Gremlins’ badass cousins from the rough side of town.
Later, things get repetitive as Sally suffers a series of close encounters and gathers more and more evidence that these aren’t hallucinations. The movie could have been cleverer about leaving it open that the girl, who’s also a gifted artist, might merely possess an overstimulated imagination or be fabricating a crisis because she doesn’t like Dad’s girlfriend.
Meanwhile, Alex’s intransigence becomes increasingly indefensible. How many pictures of the goblins will convince him? And why isn’t he more curious about the circumstances under which the handyman was nearly ripped to shreds by a swarm of tiny claws? Nor is the climax completely satisfying, given Sally’s relative passivity.
Still, the very last twist is suitably strange and chilling, and the film’s unremitting potency is a rare thing. Free up some space in your nightmare schedule. You’re going
to need it.