Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)

Directed by Troy Nixey. Starring Guy Pearce, Katie Holmes, Bailee Madison, Jack Thompson, Julia Blake, Alan Dale, Trudy Hellier, James Mackay, Garry McDonald. [R]

Dad Pearce, daughter Madison, and girlfriend Holmes move into a big, spooky Victorian mansion with a sealed fireplace adorned in runes warning to be afraid—nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Middling fright flick never tops the prologue, with its yet unanswered mysteries and its gruesome (if discreet) teeth-shattering; afterward, time jumps forward, the family arrives at the old house, and the movie settles into running through the usual haunted house clichés (minus an actual “ghost”) and character archetypes—the scared little girl, the dubious parent, the grizzled groundskeeper issuing dire warnings, and so on. Once the whispery, cackling threat down in the dark beneath the house is revealed, the pic abandons any hope of scaring the audience, but at least the filmmakers embrace the goofiness of the scenario and deliver a few mild shock-laughs as the tempo ratchets up and the special effects take over…not quite enough to save the picture, however. In order for the denouement to be effective, the viewer has to overlook an extremely glaring plot hole. First and (to date) only feature directing effort from comic book artist Nixey. Story previously told in a 1970s TV-movie of the same name; the new version was scripted by Matthew Robins and Guillermo del Toro, who also co-produced.

47/100