Give or take one or two effective horrors (Mother's Day, Julia’s Eyes), it's been a pretty thin year for scares so far. The second half should up the goose quota, though, with the Guillermo del Toro-produced Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark kicking things off haunted-house style. The movie’s got a bony-fingered new one-sheet freshly crafted to creep you out.
**Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark **is set in a creaking Victorian mansion in Rhode Island. A young couple, Alex (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes), move in with grand plans of restoring it to former glories but, like that episode of Location, Location, Location where Kirstie and Phil are possessed by satanic beasties, things go downhill fast on the renovation front. Alex’s young daughter Sally (Bailee Madison) turns up and accidentally unleashes something – or ‘things’ - scary and horrible.
They can’t say they weren’t warned. Mr. Harris (Jack Thompson), the caretaker, tells them about the mysterious disappearance of the house’s builder, nature illustrator Emerson Blackwood, a century earlier and cautions against venturing into the mansion’s dank underground chamber. Seriously folks, it’s a dank underground chamber. What are you expecting to find? The Easter bunny?
Anticipate serious scares rather than the PG-13 subterranean spooks of The Hole. Del Toro - fresh from the quashing of those Hellboy 3 rumours - don't mess about. His director is first-timer Troy Nixey, who's revisiting the 1973 made-for-telly horror of the same name.
Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark is out this autumn. Check out the trailer for more.