Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (R)
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This 2011 film is a remake of a 1973 TV movie, which I've never seen. It begins sometime in the past, with a housekeeper going down to the basement of a manor owned by a famous painter named Blackwood. It's creepy from the get-go, and quickly gets creepier as we see him steal her teeth, to give to some unseen creatures in an ash pit. He'd already given them his own teeth, in hopes of their giving back his son. But instead of getting his son back, they take him.

Flash forward to the present. A man named Alex and his girlfriend, Kim (Katie Holmes), are restoring the manor for resale, and hoping to get the cover of an architecture magazine. They don't know about the tragic history of the place, though we'll eventually learn that one of the people who work there, Mr. Harris, does. (He's the grandson of someone else who'd worked there in Blackwood's day.) Meanwhile, Alex's ex-wife has sent their young daughter, Sally (Bailee Madison), to stay with Alex. It seems as if Sally is somewhat troubled, and she certainly isn't happy about being abandoned by her mother. Nor is she eager to make friends with Kim. In fact I don't think she's got any friends at all. So, when she starts hearing voices that say they want to be her friends, she's an easy mark. But I get ahead of myself. Um... she discovers a basement that Alex and Kim had no idea was there, though Harris knew. And then Sally discovers the ash pit, which had been sealed off (just as the basement itself had been).

Anyway... at first Sally is eager to befriend the unseen creatures. Which seems really stupid. But it's not too long before she realizes they're evil, and gets scared. (She also figures out that they can't stand bright light, hence the movie's ironic title.) Kim is more willing to believer her than her father is. But of course it takes quite awhile before anyone gets serious about doing the obviously sane thing, which is to leave the house. By the time they do, it's kind of late. And the creatures have no intention of letting them leave. And yeah, we do get to see a lot of the creatures. (They're definitely creepy, and vicious, and devious, and fast, but they're also small, so it's odd that people don't do much fighting back. Even little Sally could easily kill them, if she bothered to try.) So it's all kind of frustrating, but still a genuinely scary movie, in my opinion. And I don't know what else to say.