Features > Movie Reviews > Don't Be Afraid…

Opening up that basement proves to be the worst decision they could have made.

Well, that TV movie evidently made a big impression on a young man by the name of Guillermo del Toro, who has written and produced the remake (though the direction is entrusted to comic book artist Troy Nixey.

Del Toro’s central innovation is a good one: instead of the young housewife, the heroine becomes a child, Sally (Bailee Madison), who has been sent to live with her father and his new girlfriend (Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes), interior designers who have poured their money into renovating a grand stone manse somewhere on the east coast, a long way from Sally’s LA home. Admittedly this takes us into similar territory to Pan's Labyrinth, which is presumably why del Toro didn’t direct it himself. But the fractured trust between the daughter, who must be nine or ten, and her father, who is too preoccupied with his work to spend much time with her, and putative stepmum Kim – who can’t seem to do anything right despite her best intentions – gives the movie a real emotional fulcrum.

Sally is unhappy and acting out – she’s also lonely, which makes her quite receptive when – after they’ve discovered the lost basement – she catches a hint of life down there in the grate. Not rats as her dad says, something more like fairies. And they tell her they want to be friends. It’s only when they rip up Sally’s dolly that we get a foreboding of their real intentions. No wonder the old gardener, Harris (Jack Thompson), seems so desperate to keep this room locked up and off limits.

Spindly, malevolent stick creatures just a few inches tall, these demonic sprites aren’t exactly star exhibits in del Toro’s bestiary, but that doesn’t make them any less frightening when they start crawling up Sally’s bedsheets. Like gremlins, they’re light-sensitive, so as long as her bedside lamp is plugged in she can fight back. But they’re smart too. Meanwhile the adults assume these imaginary friends – or foe – can be treated with some therapy and maybe some pills to help her sleep.

It’s not a bad little framework, this, with shades of Coraline and the old Val Lewton classic The Curse of the Cat People. But the movie has significant flaws too. It’s a big ask, that the supposedly high-flying designers (they’re hoping for the cover of Architectural Digest magazine) would be completely unaware of a basement in the house. The housekeeper and the gardener seem like characters from another century, and the backstory of the home’s original occupant (a famous painter) is laborious tosh. The performances from Pearce and Holmes are also quite weak, though young Bailee Madison acquits herself well enough.

All in all it’s a pleasantly old-fashioned haunted house movie that feels designed to creep out younger filmgoers (though it’s appropriately rated 15 in the UK), but which falls short of the standard we associate with del Toro’s name.