Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Review:

All fairytales are ultimately based on fact; now writer Guillermo del Toro will tell you the terrible truth behind the tooth fairy...

There is a race of creatures who live in the bowels of the earth and like to feast on children’s teeth. They have been trapped there only by a furnace gate, but now all those who know to fear them have died and a child lives in the home again...

Sent by her mother halfway across the US to live with her father, Sally (Bailee Madison) is homesick and bored by the house she is now forced to live in. The only points of interest in her new home are the basement she finds and the voices she hears calling for her to play from the other side of the furnace gate. However, when her new friends start causing a trail of destruction and leaving her to take the blame, Sally is no longer so sure that they mean her no harm... Her father (Guy Pearce) thinks that she is ‘acting out’ against being sent to live with him and her (almost) stepmother (Katie Holmes), or worse; that she is becoming dangerous and needs psychiatric help.

Bailee Maddison is an outstanding child actress and deserves high praise for her performance. She is the well-chosen star of the picture, while Katie Holmes is also convincing in her role as a woman with a child thrust into her life: she juggles having to make space in her house and life for the child, with her growing unease about the increasingly sinister happenings that seem to centre around Sally.

When the only weapon against these creatures is light, what happens when the lights go out?

Natalie Tyldesley