Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Show Me Your Teeth

Guillermo del Toro and Troy Nixey's adaptation of 1973 television movies of the same name tells the story of Sally (Bailee Madison), a young girl sent to live with her father (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend (Katie Holmes) in an ancient house being restored for an architecture magazine. Sally, feeling alone and unwanted in her new home, begins exploring the house and grounds on her own, and soon discovers a hidden basement. Sally soon "befriends" unseen whisperers hidden in the walls and vents of the house. The little creatures crave children's teeth and will do whatever it takes to lure Sally back down to them.


Overall, I would score the film at about 6 out of 10. There were both good and bad things in the movie.

I'll start off with the good. The overall concept was interesting and original (the original Don't Be Afraid of the Dark didn't feature a little girl or anything related to teeth and had the creatures attempting to make the female lead one of their own). I definitely liked the whole story of the creatures surviving on human bones and teeth, especially those of children (although they don't explain why).

Another thing I liked about the movie (at least the first half) was the overall creepiness of it. Mysterious secret rooms, whispers in the dark, it all brought together a very dark atmosphere that kept the film interesting.

Notice how I said this only applies to the first half of the film, this brings us to our first problem with Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, a problem that has plagued monster movies for decades: revealing the creature too early in the movie, and thus making it far less scary. The scariest thing in the world is the unknown. The reason that John Carpenter's The Thing is one of the scariest movies ever made is because he never puts a face to the "monster". I think that Don't Be Afraid of the Dark  revealed what the creatures looked like way too soon and ultimately made them a lot less scary. If, for example, the movie had kept the monsters hidden throughout the entire film, never putting a face to the whispers in the night, it would've made a much, much scarier movie. When it is revealed that the monsters are essentially a miniature combination of the Cavity Creeps from those old toothpaste commercials and Del Toro's previous stab at the tooth fairy mythos from Hellboy II, you find yourself wondering why nobody has ever thought to just step on the damn things.

One thing I didn't understand about the film was the R rating. There was no gore, not enough blood for it to deserve that rating, and the no profanity. The most graphic scene involved legs being broken, but you could barely see enough to rate it like that. I couldn't figure out what made the film so "adult". It says R for "violence and terror" but as I just stated, it was not scary and the violence wasn't overly graphic or anything. 

It's very hard to enjoy a movie marketed to be a truly scary movie that ends up being a dark fantasy which tries to make you afraid of things you could kill with a textbook. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark wasn't a film that I plan on seeing again, and I probably wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a dark horror movie to see.