I have been really anticipating the arrival of this film due to the involvement of Guillermo Del Toro. His ability to mix nightmarish creatures with childhood fantasy is really interesting. So I literally spent weeks trying to coordinate the Whores to see this movie. Finally today we ascended the Cinemark steps and sat in our sticky, squeaky chairs to partake in some fright.
The film is about a little girl who goes to live with her father that lives in an old historic house. In case you don’t watch enough scary movies, this is always a bad start. If it’s an old house with a ‘history’ don’t move in unless you enjoy rooms filled with flies and walls that bleed (see Amityville Horror for reference). Needless to say things don’t go well. The little girl finds herself talking to ghoulish creatures that progressively become more aggressive and downright mean. They cut up clothing, stab the help and cause overall havoc. They have one fear…bright light. They remind me a little bit of the evil Gremlins without the catchy one liners.
After an obligatory library scene where the heroine discovers the history of the home the creatures (which turn out to be fairies) turn it up a notch and try to kill everyone in the house. Without giving away the whole thing I will say that at least the film didn’t wrap up with a nice little bow at the end.
So the review….I’m sorry to say it was pretty bad. Katie Holms does a pretty good job as does Guy Pearce, but the little girl bugged me. She had weird teeth. The acting and script were done well enough that I watched the whole movie without really realizing how dumb it was until the end. I don’t know exactly what I didn’t like, it just felt hokey. It was filmed well, edited well, had good sound, etc. but in the end was disappointing. I’m going to have to give the film a flimsy thumb down and grade it with a D-
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