If Rats Could Hold Scissors, This Is What Would Happen

From the man who brought you the Hellboy movies, and that freaky white eyeball hand monster in Pan’s Labyrinth, comes a brand new horror film based off of a 1973 TV program where the monsters are a hoard of tiny gray hunchbacks armed with scissors. That film is: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, written and produced by Guillermo del Toro.

I heart this man. He makes fun movies, and he makes lots of fat jokes about himself. What’s not to like?

So, the latest bit of awesomeness from Mr. del Toro is not only this film, but a companion book entitled “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Blackwood’s Guide to Dangerous Fairies.” Leave it to Guillermo to turn fairies into murderous beasts. It’s not the most original recipe for horror. You start with your average creepy New England house and throw in a supernatural creature that only one person can see. In this case the baddies are evil, teeth-eating “fairies,” who try to lure the young, mentally-unstable Sally into their fiendish games to chomp on her chompers. But del Toro couldn’t be average if he tried and the resulting film is anything but boring. (Though to be fair, the fairy attacks get a little redundant before the final girl vs. fairy battle royale.) Highlights include an old timey Victorian nature painter getting sucked into a furnace after he smashes out his maid’s teeth and Katie Holmes being thrown down some stairs. Weeee!

If you like the sort of flick where a person may or may not be getting her head ripped to pieces in a bear trap, then this is not the movie for you. If however, you enjoy suspense and creepy houses and insane historical figures, then by all means you should definitely see this film. I can’t compare it to the original, because in my opinion, the 1970s never happened, thus the original doesn‘t exist. Sorry to everyone ages forty-one to thirty two. YOU WERE NEVER BORN!

It’s a tricky thing basing a movie around a child protagonist. Even if the film deals with serious story matter, many adult viewers simply tune right out whenever they see a child in the lead. But del Toro certainly doesn’t seem to have a problem pulling it off. Pan’s Labyrinth proved that for sure, and I feel Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark fairs just as well in that track.

The movie is fun, but to be honest, the book is what gives it that added air of mystery. Remember that dude who got shoved into a furnace in the movie? Well, that’s the alleged Blackwood who “wrote“ Guillermo del Toro‘s book. Think Audubon, a.k.a. the dude who painted every single picture in every single bird book ever printed, ever. Imagine if that dude went insane after coming across some less than typical “creatures” on his nature hikes. Imagine that those same “creatures” tried to eat his face off, and then he wrote a book so that others might avoid the same fate.

Then he went insane and bashed out his own teeth before getting turned into an evil fairy himself.

Blackwood’s illustrations are beyond weird and disturbing, which is exactly why you should at least go leaf through the book at your local purveyor or lender of bound paper goods. The cover alone displays a terrified child, entwined in villainous, Poltergeist-style tree branches, being held just inches above a sea of dark, spindly, twisted claws, ripping forth from the soil to drag the child down to hell. You will want to tear out the page and tape it on your wall so it can haunt you and inspire you to write or draw something equally deranged and brilliant.

Oh Guillermo del Toro! What amazing thing will you do next? Wait, I know this one. The answer is help write the Hobbit movies and down the line do a Cthulhu movie.

And you all wondered why I wanted to name my child after him.