Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

I was in the mood to to watch/mock a bad horror movie last night, and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark seemed like a pretty good option.  It's a Katie Holmes vehicle, a remake, it has a first-time director, and a pretty awful title.  It should be a shoe-in for a good drunken time, but it had a few surprises in store for me.  First of all, the star of this movie is actually a little girl.  It's rarely as much fun to brutally ridicule children as much as it is terrible adult actors with lopsided faces.  Besides, I think we can all agree that children are creepy.  Second of all, Guillermo Del Toro co-produced and co-wrote Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, which implies a certain degree of creativity.  So what's it to be?  A spectacular crap-fest, or a creative mood piece?

Sally (Bailee Madison) is in the never-enviable position of being the young child being shuttled between self-absorbed divorced parents.  Her mother has sent Sally to visit her dad, Alex (Guy Pearce), while he renovates a dilapidated New England mansion.  And by "visit," I of course mean "live forever with" --- surprise!  Alex isn't a very attentive parent, and his interest in Sally's happiness can best be described as "nonexistent."

Alex, envisioning his daughter's future bedroom

Making things even better for Sally, her dad is dating his interior designed, Kim (Katie Holmes), who feels very uncomfortable acting as a fill-in mother.  But that's all okay, because they both more or less ignore her most of the time, which allows Sally to investigate the massive building and its surrounding land.

...which apparently includes parts of Narnia

 While exploring, Sally discovers something in part of the overgrown garden.  It is a skylight for the basement, which Alex and Kim had no idea existed.  You see, the basement had been hidden by someone many years ago, when they put up a wall in front of the basement door.  Why would anyone want to do such a thing?

Because they didn't want to see children going through what appears to be a doorway to Hell?

Well, when Sally goes down to the ancient basement, she hears her name being whispered.  Some thing --- or things --- that sound like they have emphysema keep whispering for her to play with them.  Their actual words are, "We're your friends.  Come down to the basement and play with us."  While that may ring all sorts of alarm bells in a reasonable person's head, Sally is an eight-year-old and, therefore, capable of an entirely different type of stupidity.  Soon enough, the creatures are terrorizing Sally, and she can't get any adult to believe that there are evil faeries hunting her in the darkness.

Try shouting "I don't believe in faeries!"  It would kill Tinkerbell.

And that is their biggest weakness: these creatures are sensitive to bright lights.  But how hard is it to plunge an isolated old mansion into darkness?  And what do they want when they finally get their tiny paws on Sally?  They want to feast on her teeth.

Oh relax.  You have another set to look forward to.

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the acting in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.  Bailee Madison did a solid job in the lead role.  For child actors in horror movies, there is a fine line between acting scared and being extremely annoying, but Madison never really approached anything obnoxious.  I thought she was pretty believable, even when making extremely poor choices.  

Example: this is where she went potty

She wasn't a fantastic lead, but I'll take solid acting over overacting any day, especially with children.  Aside from her lopsided smile, Katie Holmes was also pretty good as the most reasonable character in the movie.  Her character was pretty bland, but I didn't mind watching her in this movie, which is as much as I am capable of complimenting her.  Guy Pearce was capable as the father, in that I think he played the part that the script asked for, but his character was just awful.  It's not just that he was an offensively bad (although, to be fair, not evil) father figure; he has a complete 180 toward the end of the movie, and it just doesn't work.   

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was the first (and so far, only) directorial effort by Troy Nixey.  For a first effort, Nixey had an uphill battle.  This is, at its core, a haunted house movie, which means it relies heavily on atmosphere and suspense --- two things that even veteran directors have trouble with. There are moments where he succeeds; the smaller-scale scares that leave something to the imagination are actually pretty good.

Two words: creepy hands

However, the script calls for a lot less mystery than I think this plot calls for.  For being a movie about creatures in the dark, the audience gets to see an awful lot of the creatures in question.  The special effects on these creatures are pretty good, but that's beside the point.  If this isn't supposed to be a creature feature --- and it definitely isn't --- then why do we see so much of the things that are supposed to be scaring us in the dark?  

"Bippity boppity bitch!"

That's a choice that I disagree with, but it doesn't make for a bad film.  What dumbs this picture down a few notches is its inconsistency with regards to how it treats light.  The sensitivity the devil faeries have for light ranges the gamut, from absolutely requiring deep, dark shadows to being able to hang out at a well-lit party (sitting in a potted plant, but still...).  The cinematography doesn't help any.  This should be a very, very dark film, from a lighting perspective.  It's called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, but whenever the lights go out, it looks like a spotlight is shining in from outside.  And once Katie Holmes' character buys into this whole shadow faery thing, she doesn't think to go out and buy a bunch of lamps or flashlights or anything?  That's just stupid.  The film's consistency and logic, as well as its look and feel, are definitely things the director is responsible for.  I think Nixey had some good instincts in his first directorial effort, but some of the basics are lacking.

As a horror movie, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark doesn't have a lot of what genre fans typically look for in an R-rated flick.  There is a bit of gruesome violence at the beginning of the movie; the prologue was pretty cool and even had me cringing a little.  For the rest of the movie, though, there isn't much violence or gore to speak of.  If you were looking for gratuitous nudity, I would like to point out that the heroine is a child, so...please stop.  

This is not sexy

Still, this is more of a suspense-type horror, so sex and violence were never strong possibilities.  Unfortunately, the suspense isn't too effective.  It has creepy moments, especially in the first half, but the second half is full of mind-numbing stupidity.  None of the characters, the monsters included, do anything even remotely logical.  Here's just a small example of how frustrating this script is: little Sally has just fought off some faeries and has taken some pictures of them and has even crushed one; when her father dismisses her claims as an overactive imagination, she tries to find a photo to prove her case instead of the faery corpse she left in the damned bookcase.  That's not the dumbest moment in this movie, mind you --- it's just one of the easiest to explain.  When you add all that up, this isn't a very good horror movie.  The acting of Bailee Madison goes a long way toward making this easier to watch, but it doesn't make up for a dumb script.  If this was PG or PG-13, I would be a little more forgiving, but being rated R and missing out on anything on my horror checklist AND being stupid is just too much to overlook.  It's not as bad as I thought a Katie Holmes movie would be, but it is definitely not very good.

Go

What is she doing?  Tossing a business card?

What is the 1990s worst contribution to popular culture?  Hammer pants?  R and B hooks in rap songs?  Nu-metal?  My vote goes to rave kids.  Don't be confused: I'm perfectly okay with raves, because I can choose to stay away from them and their drug- and sex-fueled semi-mobile dance parties; raves are kind of like the gypsies of the party scene, squatting wherever they can for the weekend and then skipping to a new home next week.  No, I hate rave kids.  Ugh.  Hands swirling, glo-stick wearing, pacifier-sucking, pill-popping, candy necklaces --- I hate everything superficial about them.  Oh, and dude, I don't care if cotton feels AMAZING when you're rolling on ecstasy, stop licking my shirt.  Surprisingly, the first movie I ever saw about the rave scene was the totally awesome Human Traffic (watch the UK version, if you can find it).  So, when a reader requested that I review Go, another rave-themed film, I watched with cautious optimism.

At it's core, Go is a film about a drug deal gone bad.  And, um, a fairly unconnected trip to Vegas, probably because director Doug Liman was coming off of Swingers.  The story is split into three parts (Ronna's Story, Simon's Story, and Adam & Zack's Story) with an integrated ending. It all revolves around Ronna's (Sarah Polley) misadventures filling in as a drug dealer when her local dealer, Simon (Desmond Askew), leaves for Las Vegas on short notice.  Ronna is in desperate need of cash to avoid eviction, and her joe job at the supermarket isn't going to cut it by tomorrow.  Thankfully, fate intervenes when two dudes, Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr), ask her for some ecstasy.  How does she get it?  She goes to her dealer's supplier, Todd (Timothy Olyphant).  Oh, wait...remember how she doesn't have much money?  It turns out that drugs cost money.  Who knew?  Ronna gives Todd what she has and leaves her friend, Claire (Katie Holmes) behind as collateral.  That's okay, though, because Ronna will make some quick cash off of Adam and Zack, and be right back!  Unless they're part of a police drug bust operation, that is.  Ronna is faced with a tough decision.  Does she make the sale and risk going to jail, or should she dump the drugs?  One way is risky, but could make money.  The other is safer, but would leave her without any cash for rent, cash to free Claire, or drugs to sell back to Todd/sell to other people.  Meanwhile, Simon is in Vegas with his buddies and manages to get involved with (in this order):

• explosive diarrhea
• gambling
• three-way tantric sex
• a stolen car
• a stolen gun
• private strip club dance
• a 1970s-style car chase

It sounds like a pretty sweet first trip to Vegas, right?  That's why I couldn't elope to Vegas for my wedding.  Even more meanwhile, Adam and Zack's story tells how these two nice guys could end up being sneaky undercover drug agents, trying to arrest innocent Ronna's all over town.  The short answer is because they love drugs, too.  In the end, all three plots come together with a nice, neat bow on top, and everything is right with the world.  The end.

Man, this movie has a lot of noteworthy actors.  Having Sarah Polley (who is decent enough) as the lead doesn't usually indicate that, but there were a lot of young up-and-kind-of-maybe-comers in this film.  Katie Holmes and her crooked smile make a small appearance.  It's not great work, but I'm not going to pick on someone who presumably has a heart condition.  Seriously, did she have a stroke, or did someone just melt the side of her face?  That broken smile bugs me.  Timothy Olyphant was actually pretty decent, even though it looked like he was doing his best Billy Idol impression throughout.  Desmond Askew is the most likable character in the whole movie, perhaps because his story is the most fun.  Regardless, he overcomes some eye-roll-worthy dialogue early in the film to be the best bit.  Taye Diggs does a pretty solid job as Simon's not-moronic friend; James Duval and Brekin Meyer spent most of their screen time suffering from diarrhea, which is good because Duval is always awful and Meyer's character was a skinny white boy who pretended to be ghetto.  The movie would have been better if those two had died violent deaths, but this isn't a perfect film.  Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf are about as good as you might expect, with both having definite television-actor-level talent and Mohr's amazing ability to seem smug, even when his character tries to be earnest.  I liked to see William Fichtner and Jane Krakowski pop up in this movie; sadly, their parts were poorly written and used mostly for shock value.  Their characters were built up to be one thing, but the joke is that they are something else, completely unrelated to the first thing!  Get it?  It's called wasted script pages, kids.  They're bad.  All in all, the acting is serviceable, with Askew and Olyphant being the stand outs and Meyer and Duval being the fungus in this film's proverbial toilet bowl.

Director Doug Liman does a good job keeping this movie moving, and the pace is probably the best part of this film.  You can argue that the fractured storytelling, quick dialogue, and crime story show that Go stole its style from Pulp Fiction, but left all the drama and compelling characters behind.  And you would be correct.  Still, this movie tries to be clever and the frenetic pace makes most of the plot holes --- if Ronna is seventeen, why does she have her own apartment? --- unnoticeable.  Unfortunately, some of the cuts and edits in this film seem to serve no purpose.  Why do we start the film with Claire talking to Todd the next morning?  Why those two characters?  They are neither the primary plot, nor a linchpin that tied everything together, so it feels like it's just thrown in to make the movie seem mysterious, like they wanted audiences to whisper, "Oh, boy, did you catch all that?  Something must have happened last night for these characters!"  Some of the dialogue is good, some of it is sophomoric, but I will give screenwriter (and frequent Tim Burton collaborator) John August credit for writing a movie meant to be hep with the young folks and have it not feel completely outdated ten years later.  It's nowhere near as great of a script as this movie thinks it is, but it tries.

This really is a busy movie.  It has the attention span of a kid on a sugar rush (or a teen rolling on ecstasy), and a lot happens.  Some of it is dumb.  Why would anyone trust random grocery store customers that want to buy large quantities of drugs for any reason?  Who rips people off with fake drugs and then stays at that party?  If Todd "gives head before [he] gives favors --- and [he] doesn't give head," then why does Simon have his credit card?  If Simon stole the credit card, then why doesn't that ever come up in the story?  And why don't any of the four guys going to Vegas have their own credit card to hold their hotel room?  On the bright side, there is a psychic cat, which was pretty funny.  Unlike most crime and/or drug movies, this film is relatively consequence-free, which cuts the flakier aspects of the film some slack.  It's kind of like a Snackwell's devil's food cake cookie; you know Go isn't going to blow your mind, but it's fun and not that bad for you, so why not enjoy?

Go was a reader request.  Want me to review something?  Maybe I will.