Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)
Directed by Troy Nixey
A young girl sent to live with her father and his new girlfriend discovers creatures in her new home who want to claim her as one of their own.
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What critics compared Don't Be Afraid of the Dark to
The responsibility is far more than she bargained for, but one she is willing to fight for when the mysterious presence Victoria and Lily call "Mama" turns out not to be imaginary after all.Intentionally or not, "Mama" takes worthwhile inspiration from 2002's " The Ring ," 2003's " Darkness Falls ," and 2011's " Don't Be Afraid of the Dark " while cooking up its own gothic standalone fable.
Mama, directed by Andrés Muschietti and produced by del Toro, is a case in point: its conclusion conveniently gets rid of the member of the family who can’t be made to fit in – just like the del Toro-produced Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark effected some sort of reconciliation between two relatives by sacrificing the extra person in the family.
Mama is the lastest horror movie to carry the prestigious stamp of being "presented by Guillermo del Toro" - following in the tradition of such films as The Orphanage (2007) and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010).
If “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” was any indicator, Guillermo del Toro’s influence on “Mama” was sure to be a positive angle to the horror tale.
In terms of genre projects that del Toro has produced throughout the years under other filmmakers, Mama falls in somewhere between the highly superior ghost tale The Orphanage and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, which I felt were rather underwhelming efforts.
(The short doesn’t spoil anything in the movie; it’s little more than a “Boo!”) Del Toro took them in, supported their work, and provided guidance, technical support, and financing, as he has with other first-time filmmakers in recent years—Carlos Cuarón with Rudo Y Cursi , Troy Nixey with Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark , Juan Antonio Bayona with The Orphanage .
All of this is del Toro through and through - the most substantive and far-reaching change to the material was to turn Sally into a child, and thereby make his version of Don't Be Afraid into an American-set Pan's Labyrinth without the socio-historical context.
CHICAGO – Echoing elements of masterful works by Producer Guillermo Del Toro (most notably “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Pan’s Labyrinth”), “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is an incredibly frustrating remake, a film that reminds one of scary movies instead of actually producing scares itself.
The film moves well but it’s obvious that Nixey (as well as screenwriters del Toro and Matthew Robbins) have been influenced by what they’ve seen before, including “Poltergeist,” “Gremlins,” “The Amityville Horror” and del Toro’s own “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
Despite all that -- and despite the film's echoes of earlier horror films (there's a little "Poltergeist" in there, a hint of Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" and, of course, echoes of the 1973 TV movie on which the whole thing is based) -- it still works reasonably well as a nerve-wracking diversion.
Co-written by Guillermo del Toro, “Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark” borrows a lot from the great horror filmmaker’s work in films like “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
Produced and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, the filmmaker responsible for "Pan's Labyrinth" and the two "Hellboy" movies, and directed by rookie Troy Nixey, "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" stays away from the blood and guts that dominate so much of modern horror in favor of building suspense and creating scares through whispers in the dark, the production design of its creepy old mansion and placing the audience in the shoes of its protagonist, a young girl sent away from her mother in California to live with her dad in Rhode Island.
What it does call to mind is the del Toro-produced horror picture The Orphanage , along with every other "big scary house" movie of the last several years.
Produced by Guillermo Del Toro, the picture feels an awful lot like another Del Toro production, 2008's The Orphanage, which also provides solid atmosphere, a couple of gross-outs, and an overall feeling of pleasant well-being.
Del Toro doesn't direct the film -- he produced and gets an above-the-title "presented by" credit, as with 2007's " The Orphanage " -- but his fingerprints are all over this one.
As with "The Orphanage," another Del Toro produced first feature, "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" returns horror to a more elegant and atmospheric style and approach.
As del Toro did with 2007's "The Orphanage" -- another film he produced -- and its director, Juan Antonio Bayona, he again fosters the career of a talented newcomer.
Hell, it’s not half as good as Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage, and yet … there’s still that fanciful little streak, that intangible affection for the nostalgic fears of our collective childhood … those facets still come through in the new film.
Even with solid acting and a gifted director, the Australian flick is identical to any film about a creepy kid with a neurotic parent (2005’s Hide and Seek, 2011’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, the list is endless), you’ve yawned through it all before.
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In fact, his latest sits somewhere between Pan’s Labyrinth and the more conventional haunted-house spooker Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, both in terms of its production and its costume design, with obvious reference to the Victorian period and its literature throughout thrown in for good measure.
Allerdale Hall is a palimpsest of gothic country houses: Wuthering Heights , Manderley from Rebecca , and even the goblin-infested home from del Toro’s 2010 reimagining of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark .
Co-penned by Matthew Robbins (2011's " Don't Be Afraid of the Dark "), the film's spectral visitations bring ominous window-dressing and haunting suggestion to a plot where the gravest horrors are committed by the still very much living and breathing.When her beloved father (Jim Beaver) meets a grisly end, Edith is stripped of the last loved one of her known bloodline.
As it happens, del Toro (together with co-writer Robbins) already has a far more effective haunted-house picture under his belt, the Troy Nixey-directed “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” (a movie that, while scripted for a PG-13, landed an R from the MPAA for sheer intensity).
Crimson Peak sees del Toro take another crack at the old dark house territory he recently explored in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark , a middling effort, directed by Troy Nixey and penned by del Toro and Matthew Robbins.
Viewers expecting Hellboy or Pacific Rim may be disappointed, but fans of slow-burn ghostly fare like Nicole Kidman’s The Others and del Toro’s own Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark will enjoy the feel of their skin both crawling and tingling.
While 2008’s Hellboy 2: The Golden Army was his last directorial effort, and with Pacific Rim, his next feature behind the camera, not due for release for another two years, he’ll have produced, or executive produced, a whopping 10 films in between, earning himself the reputation as one of the most talented filmmakers in the industry along the way.
I think often of when Hellboy kills the Earth Elemental in Hellboy II, of the enormous moral complexity of that sequence, the peril, the sense of ecology, and the feeling of loss once the monster is vanquished--all things seldom felt at the movies since Dragonslayer, perhaps (making apt del Toro's screenwriting collaborations with Dragonslayer helmer Matthew Robbins on Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and the upcoming Crimson Peak), and none of which is especially evident anywhere in Pacific Rim.
His remake of “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” was a stinker, and this tribute to Japanese monster movies isn’t appreciably better.