Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011 Remake)

I have a sort of love/hate relationship when it comes to modern supernatural horror movies. On one hand, the films are getting better when it comes to delivering atmosphere. On the other hand, how many times can you watch the same movie over and over?

-Couple moves into house, may or may not have kids.

-emotional/mental baggage comes with being the main character.

-spooky jump scares and brief glimpses of creepy demonic things.

-creepy child drawing creepy pictures of a creepy place that acts as foreshadowing of something creepy that will creepily creep up later creep.

-one of the protagonists becomes an investigative journalist in the last half of the movie to find out what's REALLY GOING ON.

-Movie has a bittersweet ending.

This movie is in a middle ground of these kinds of films. It surprised me that the filmmakers didn't take the easy way out with its scares and set ups, but then again Guillermo had a huge hand in writing and making this movie, and he was responsible for the excellent The Devil's Backbone. Each time I thought this movie was going to do something predictable, I was surprised when that ended up not being the case.

I guess I should give a plot. A family moves into a creepy house that they are renovating for some architectural or historical society deal. The girl of the family, Sally, was  given up by her mother to live with her father, who is renovating the building with his girlfriend. Soon, Sally comes across this odd heater/fire place thing in the basement of the house where she can hear voices whispering her name.

It turns out that there are strange, ancient little creatures living deep below their house in the earth that feed on children, and they've chosen Sally as their next target. Besides scaring her by their presence alone, the little monsters choose to whisper bad and hurtful words to Sally to deceive her already fragile mind. When it came to it, I found these moments more disturbing than the usual "stalk and attack" moments, and I felt you could only have those "stalk and attack" moments so many times before I stopped caring what the outcome of them was.

In terms of scariness, I was a bit let down. The beginning portions of the movie were terrifying, but as the movie went on I felt that the threat factor of these little gremlins was decreasing. Maybe it was due to their actual appearance. In the first half of the film you don't get to see much of what they look like, following the rules of Jaws where the less you see of it, the more terrifying it is.

As much as I nitpick, overall this movie was top notch, a step above films of its type that suffer from doing nothing new for its audience. The actors were all great (Guy Pearce--and here I'd been complaining that he wasn't doing much lately--Katie Holmes, Bailee Madison--great performance from someone so young) and the atmosphere was perfect, but as much as the film plays against audience expectation, it also falls into the tropes that one comes to expect from these kinds of films.

I give Don't Be Afraid of the Dark a B.