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I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Absolutely the worst movie.

A Disappointing Continuation

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

I admit, it is a problem having a video night and watching one poor movie after another .. you almost expect the worst.However, this movie is bad. It is not at all suspenseful, it has quite terrible acting (which is a surprise considering the actors are by no means B-actors), bad, bad CGI .. and most prominently .. a really bad story!At its core, it is a redemption patchwork family movie .. with creatures. Sadly though, the family drama never exceeds "tele-novela" drama quality .. and the creatures themselves are about as scary as muppets. At no point the threat of those creatures feels serious in any way. They only thing they do benefit from is the clumsiness of the protagonists (the usual problem of protagonists being unable to run a straight line without falling to the ground, or fumble a key ... or make it from a room normal sized living room in less than 5 minutes.Stay away from this movie, it is terrible .. and sadly not "so bad, its good"...

I feel I have to give this film a 10/10 because I really like it and to balance all the negative reviews. It astounds me how often bad movies become popular and good movies are overlooked, until decades later when they are rediscovered and people come to their senses. This movie is chilling. The set is gorgeous, the house is a character in itself, it adds to the exposition and the action. However, I would say the house itself is not evil, it is merely a doorway, so it balances the real evil with a foundation of a good solid home built from love but tainted by the evil seeping out through it. The actors are great. Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes are no amateurs and the little girl who played Sally did a great job too. The characters are relatable, fallible, heroic. The creatures are very creepy! What an awesome idea to make an evil version of the tooth fairy. Ingenious. They are well animated and I like how they also have individual characterization--you can see which one is the painter and which his son--so their is continuity in the story there. I think the idea that they try to lure the girl to them and separate her from her parents by suggesting she isn't wanted and then turn violent when it doesn't work is good writing. It's a story progression, not just mindless action. The tooth fairy angle is, to me, not at all far fetched considering humans have been sacrificing themselves and others to deities for centuries and I appreciate the Norse/Scandinavian tie in with the lore and runes above the hole. The part with the pope making an agreement with them to take teeth and leave silver is also a brilliant touch. Many of us gave teeth to the tooth fairy when we were kids, we never saw her, how do we know what "she" was? (Of course I know the reality but let's imagine her personification instead.) The ending is great. It is both heroic and tragic and I find that most memorable horror movies have tragic endings. However, I like that it is colored with just a bit of good in that Holmes's character sacrifices herself for Sally who she just met. What is so unsettling is how quickly this heroic character is twisted to evil, eager to help the group capture and kill their next victim, and that her sacrifice may have saved Sally but did nothing to stop the persistent cycle of death. The music. Has no one noticed how great the music is? There are a couple of solid memorable themes and the music is quite well composed, meaning it is more classical or complex than other horror movie scores. It also is used to great effect at the right moments and really puts the viewer on edge. Some of the "gags" in the movie are really unique. Like when the creatures try to stab Pearce's character in the eye when he looks through the keyhole and just miss. That's something I've not seen elsewhere and it is just chilling and tense. The first scene with the maid is also very disturbing and memorable largely due to the sound of the metal chisel scraping on her teeth. The sound designer or whoever is in charge of inserting such things should be complimented there.Overall, the film offers a great mix of action, some gore, a couple jump scares, solid acting, a unique well written story, creepy monsters, a beautiful setting, and an ending that is an appropriately unsettling balance of triumph and despair.

A little girl named Sally (Bailee Madison) is sent to live with her dad Alex (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes) in Rhode Island. Alex & Kim are in the process of restoring the lavish country estate that they live in. As fate would have it, a basement room long kept hidden reveals a secret: very diminutive creatures - scores of them - reside in the place and are always demanding to be fed. Sally discovers their existence, and is initially intrigued, but the intrigue turns to terror soon enough.Remaking the memorable 1973 TV movie of the same name was a long time pet project for co-writer / co-producer Guillermo Del Toro. The bigger budget and production values result in a movie that is able to offer some decent, if drab, visuals. (There's not a big color palate in this film.) Filmed on location in Australia, this version of 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark' has some moderately engaging horror moments, although it's not without its problems. For one thing, Dad is fairly infuriating, and it's Kim (likely named after original TV movie star Kim Darby) that forges the bigger bond with the little girl. Some genre fans may be pleased to note that Del Toro and Troy Nixey, the director whom Del Toro selected for this show, focus a lot on atmosphere. That's not to say, however, that this isn't without its bloody and violent portions. The creatures are quite amusingly designed, but after a while one realizes that they're seeing them far too much. And that's one thing that the '73 version had going for it: more subtlety.Holmes is actually rather appealing as the young woman who hopes to connect with this child. Pearce is good, but like this viewer said, his character doesn't come off all that well. It's young Madison that provides the heart for this picture; you really do feel for this kid. Aussie icon Jack Thompson is delightful as Harris, the caretaker on the premises who is soon revealed to know more than he lets on. You kind of wish he had more to do.After a promising start, this soon becomes rather trite stuff, but it's slickly made and adequately paced, and in the end is faithful to its source material.Six out of 10.

After moving into a new house in the countryside, a young girl discovers the area home to a race of diminutive beings who need to feed on human teeth to survive and must convince her parents to help her stop them.This is quite a decent enough effort that does have enough going for it to make it work. The main thing going for this one is the fact that house itself is used to build the kind of atmosphere and presence that gives this a rather impressive amount of suspense throughout this. By being the kind of location that can accurately keep the creatures hidden so well as it does here by utilizing the darkened hallways, light-less rooms and generally creepy layout this gives off, it has the perfect hiding locations to allow the creatures to stay a rather impressive force by having them know the lay-out so that there's an advantage to them that's not available elsewhere. That gives this a few rather impressive attack scenes throughout this with there being the basement brutalizing and the ambush in the bathroom to give this a rather spectacular air about it to having the kind of action required to stay invested here. As well, the final half which is the assault on the dinner party and the guests there is quite a bit of fun and really works quite well, helped by the swarm of creatures there but also managing to get plenty of high-end spectacle coming from this so it all works out quite well. These do help somewhat to overcome the few flaws in here, though nothing overcomes the factor of having the father be so utterly clueless and careless towards his daughter's claims. The blatant dismissals here generally feel solely there to provide an excuse to stay in the house and keep the plot rolling along rather than out of any general kind of rational behavior on his part, as the kind of sequences ushered throughout here are far more worthy of investigation on his part and these are brushed off quite simply to move the plot along so these are quite unbelievable. As well, the constantly-changing tone of the creatures here is somewhat confusing, since it gives them a reverence and feel towards their behavior and general appearance that reads more like a fantasy than a straightforward horror effort so there's a rather alarming clash against the brutal and vicious actions they undergo here. It doesn't help the CGI looks atrocious and off throughout here as they rarely interact well with their surroundings and the size changes throughout, but when they have a whimsical attitude towards someone here only to suddenly swarm them with knives and surgical tools to violently begin hacking them to pieces, it's differing moods is a big problem. Otherwise, this one isn't so bad.Rated R: Violence, Language and continuous children-in-jeopardy.