Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark Might Scare Off The Help

It’s the thing you don’t see that’s always the scariest part of a horror movie. And it’s those places you can’t see as a kid underneath the bed, inside the closet, up in the attic where the horrible child-eating monsters are always waiting to get you. Put those things together, and you’ve got “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” a goosebumps-y haunted-house flick where the floorboards and the mattresses and the big old furnace in the basement really are hiding something deadly. A remake of a fairly-effective TV movie from 1973 the monsters were cheap, but the suspense was smartly ratcheted the new “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” was directed by first-timer Troy Nixey, although you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a new movie from Guillermo del Toro, whose name gets the most prominent placement on the posters and in the advertising. Even if del Toro didn’t yell “Action!” and “Cut!” the movie bears his imprint, from his fascination with scary stories told from a child’s point-of-view (“The Devil’s Backbone”) to the elegantly grotesque creatures (which bear more than a resemblance to the creepy-crawlies from “Pan’s Labyrinth”). The child in question this time around is Sally (Bailee Madison), an unhappy young girl being shuttled from her unstable mother to go and live with her father Alex (Guy Pearce), who’s in the process of restoring a gorgeous old mansion with the help of his girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes). Kim does her best to get close to Sally, particularly since the work-obsessed Alex doesn’t pay much attention to her, but Sally resists. And while exploring one day, Sally finds a sealed-off room that Alex opens up over the warnings of Harris (Jack Thompson), the house’s longtime caretaker.