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If You Can Look Past Joey Potter, There's Much To Be Said For The Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark Trailer

By TK | Posted Under Trailers | Comments (17)

Dont be afraid of the dark.jpg

Don’t let the presence of Katie Holmes fool you: Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark has a lot more going for it than you might think. Despite Holmes, who seems like a very nice person with a very fucked up life, but who is also simply a pretty bland and uninteresting actress, the film may well be a bit of a gem.

The story ain’t exactly breaking new ground: A couple and their child move into an old house with a scary history, and terrible things ensue. BUT: it co-stars Guy Pearce, who the world needs more of. It’s written by Guillermo Del Toro of Blade II, Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth fame, and Matthew Robbins. Robbins has a rather fascinating filmography — he wrote the screenplay for Del Toro’s as-yet unmade At The Mountains Of Madness, but he also wrote and directed 1987’s *batteries not included and 1981’s cult classic, Dragonslayer. It’s directed by first-time director Troy Nixey, who is most well-known as a comics illustrator, having worked on projects such as Mike Mignola’s Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham and Batman: The Gasworks, as well as Neil Gaiman’s Only the End of the World Again.

So there’s a lot going on behind the scenes here.

Watch the trailer:

OK, so I didn’t see the little gremlin-y creatures coming, but I like the overall style. Hopefully, Holmes won’t be too distractingly dull. But the presence of Pearce makes it much more appealing.









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Comments

I am SORELY tempted. It sort of reminds me of The Orphanage, another del Toro project. I'll probably see it and love it.

Posted by: Sassafrass Green at May 31, 2011 10:38 AM

I would put up with a lot of gremlins to live in a house like that. Oh that beautiful grille work on the air vents!! I know Mrs. Julien would agree with me on this.

Posted by: PaddyDog at May 31, 2011 10:44 AM

This looks like a riot. One of the very few things that bother me in horror movies is the dark---the opening credits for the Nickelodeon show used to scare me like no other---but it doesn't come up that often. The Devil's Backbone was an excellent ghost story; hopefully del Toro has that same touch here.

Posted by: harlequin at May 31, 2011 10:54 AM

For a second there, I thought this might be a remake of Wait Until Dark, and I was going to question how in the world someone could look past Katie Holmes with Audrey Hepburn standing in front of her, much less not want to smack her upside her delusional head. But, it's not and she's not. So...

No harm, no foul, Mrs. Cruise. Carry on.

Posted by: RobP at May 31, 2011 10:54 AM

This is a remake of a made for TV movie called "Don't Be Afraid of The Dark." It's the same exact idea, even down to the little gremlin creatures who are afraid of the light.

I saw the original on TV when I was like 7 years old. Scared the jelly stuffing right out of a young, lil' 'Donut.

Posted by: Forbiddendonut at May 31, 2011 10:57 AM

Is it just me, or do a lot of the shots of the house remind anyone of The Haunting? That movie was god awful, but the house was gorgeous.

Posted by: KatSings at May 31, 2011 11:02 AM

Same exact thought KatSings, although methinks the set design for The Haunting borrowed more than just a little bit from the Casper set(Bill Pullman and Christina Ricci circa 1995). While I'm a sucker for creepy old house movies, I am now painfully aware of how consistently I've paid actual pieces of money to see a bajillion crapola films that exploit the same exact premise (Insidious, Darkness, The Messengers, The Amityville Horror's, 13 ghosts, House on Haunted Hill, Silent Hill, An American Haunting, Haunting In Connecticut, the Others, Ghost Ship, Big Momma's House 1-12, Jason X (in Space), Flubber, Gorillas in the Mist...I could go on for days).

Anyway I think they all frightened me less than a trip to...a place that would in no way scare me. At all. Which is to say if I want to remain calm and not piss anyone off by screaming obscenities at the screen, I'd better just go this one solo.

Posted by: beet salad at May 31, 2011 11:29 AM

@forbiddendonut: My little brother and I watched this on TV as little kids and you had better believe it left a scar (on par w the Child Catcher from ChittyChitty BangBang, but, uh, different).

Many years later...I will not see this remake. Del Toro is too effective (Pale Man!) and I just don't have room in my head for little white froggy-toll-y things that whisper "We want your ssspirit... up through the vents of a creepy old house.. No thanks.

Posted by: klingonfree at May 31, 2011 11:41 AM

Oh, you can keep your scary houses and your saw-wielding maniacs. They're really just run of the mill stuff. BUT, mention the Childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and you are descending into a whole new level of terror. There I cannot go. Not without my Xanax.

Posted by: PaddyDog at May 31, 2011 11:49 AM

They look kind of cute?

Posted by: VK at May 31, 2011 11:58 AM

@paddydog: Re Child Catcher -- I won't let my kids see that movie and I will never even TRY to watch it again. That creature is satanically conceived and perfectly executed. I would not be surprised if that actor (was it an actor? Really? How do we know for sure???)never worked again. We need to start a support group for survivors of that movie.

Here's a hair-raising thought: Del Toro re-making Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Posted by: klingonfree at May 31, 2011 12:19 PM

This looks like a movie that would be better off without the little monsters crawling around everywhere much like The Descent.

Posted by: Dingle Berry at May 31, 2011 2:03 PM

klingonfree:

There are no real survivors. Only CCBBPTSVs (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Post Traumatic Stress Victims). I have four siblings and we tend to argue a lot: but we huddle together in fear whenever the Child Catcher is mentioned. It doesn't help that when we were young, my mother would invoke the Child Catcher to make us behave.
"If you don't stop that right now, I'll call The Child Catcher to come and take you".

Yes. My. Own. Mother.

Posted by: PaddyDog at May 31, 2011 2:35 PM

I saw *batteries not included after ingesting a ridiculous amount of shrooms. To this day I am terrified of this movie. I might have to skip this. It sounds great, like a movie I'd really enjoy, but damn those tiny robots! That's all I can think of when I see Matthew Robbins' name.

Posted by: Scully at May 31, 2011 4:13 PM

count me as a ccbbptsv. i saw that movie forty years ago and i'm still a mess.

Posted by: splinter at May 31, 2011 8:30 PM

The first minute was pretty laughable. Totally derivative, nothing new. The wall mural looks like they went shopping at a garage sale from "The Ring".

And the bad guys actually whisper "Come and join us"?!? Have all the good ghost lines have been taken?

Posted by: Johnnyboy at May 31, 2011 9:09 PM

Ghosts only haunt really nice houses. They refuse to hang out anywhere less than 1.5, well 1.2 in this market.

Posted by: Haystacks at May 31, 2011 9:28 PM