I can't call it "the worst movie I've ever seen", just because I'm not sure that it should be called a movie.

The little girl (Bailee Madison) is very good, and it is set in a cool creepy old mansion, but that's about all. The camera-flash bit (to keep the pixies at bay) was old in '72 when the original TV movie stole it from "Rear Window," and it looks even worse today. I expected more from the creator of "Pan's Labyrinth."

I dont understand all the bad scores honestly. I'm quite sick of nondescript behind the scenes bad guys in horror movies (ghosts, demons for exorcisms, people with masks). It's nice for once to have a tangible living force of creatures for the characters and the audience to see. not to mention its not another evil child movie. for my money, I got what I wanted. some creepy guillermo creatures and a decent story to accompany them.

Just terrible. Bursting at the seams with horror film cliches. And the monsters are lame.

Lame story. Some cool atmosphere. Not worth the time to view it.

People don't give this enough credit. They wanted something specific and when it was something else they wrote it off.

What were they thinking, everyone who is affiliated with the production of this vile piece of stinking trash!? If a horror turns into a cute comedy you know shit just hit the fan. Everything... Literally everything about this flick is done badly. Now THAT my fellow Critickers, deserves every Razzie of 2012.

Beautiful but disappointing...

The lensing and the art direction are pretty terrific, but the rest of it is forgettable, silly and somewhat annoying.

I don't know. Paranormal Activity bored the hell out of me. This was rather enjoyable.

PEOPLE, STOP MAKING MOVIES ABOUT EVIL TOOTH FAIRIES, IT IS NOT FUCKING SCARY! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED DEL TORO!

A very bland feeling movie that I had a hard time getting into. But the only thing that really got me to like it a little bit was the last death of the movie. I thought that was the right ending for this movie, as disappointing as it was.

I actually liked the premise and the monsters (even if they are totally squish-able), but I couldn't stand any of the characters, especially Pearce, what a tool.

Not bad.

The atmosphere was pretty good and the brutal sections rang incredibly strong. Overall, a bit better than okay.

Almost incomprehensible, stuffed to the gills with breaches in logic (pay special attention to the use of a Polaroid camera, the father's wavering degrees of skepticism, the significance of a severed arm, inconsistencies in the film's mythology and the presence of English accents in a film set in Rhode Island), but--hey--it's rarely less than entertaining, providing some groovy atmosphere and a few solid scares.

Bog standard Hollywood horror fare. CGI creatures & irrational behavior abound.

I'm okay with this. Visually, it's very lovely and fleshed-out for the most part. Honestly, could have done without the CGI "Gremlins" rip-offs, I think it would have gone over much better had they been a "faceless unseen fear" sort of thing. But, they decided on CGI gremlins, so, there you have it. This movie is a moving poster for bad parenting; I dunno if they were going for that or it was just poorly-written characters. Katie and Guy do enough, while Bailee is creepy as fuck. It's passable.

At times its great, but Don't Be Afraid of the Dark suffers from many directorial and writing flaws that ultimately stunt what could have been a great horror film into a mediocre, confusing and at times laughable venture into darkness.

All-around bland movie. Nothing stands out and the acting ranges from okay to sub-par (Holmes). The monsters start off creepy but eventually lose all scariness due to their size, attitude and their inability to do anything ever. Go watch Gremlins or The Gate instead of this because it doesn't do anything new and ends up being a boring timewaster.

Reading Guillermo del Toro in the beginning, I expected way more. This is mediocre, some scenes reminded me of Pan's Labyrinth - like when the girl looks around in the garden. Too bad this movie misses all of the magical feel and look of that film. In the end, it's just a substandard pseudo horror movie that takes itself too serious. It clearly goes downhill once you see those "monsters"...

I liked the ghostly grim house, and I liked the animated creatures. They worked fine. But practically nothing else did not. The idea was funny and the director did not have skills to get anything scary out of it. The plot did not work, a kid was nothing special (except looked like an old woman), and the end was ridiculous.

Who is the target audience for this lame film? It's too boring for kids, it's too lazy and predictable for adults, and it's too shitty for cynical alcholic nerds like myself. What a waste of money. Funny how the people who made this thought it was a good idea to have miniature hunchbacked CGI kobolds as the villains. Idiots.

This was neither good nor scary and one of the biggest disappointments in recent horror film history. The ‘monsters’ of the film were some of the least scary villains I have ever seen. I had mice in my house last year that were more terrifying than those little gnome fairy things.

crap

"Pity that the mythology of the homunculi's existence is as arbitrary as the story's lazy, asinine plotting." - Ed Gonzalez

useless, stupid

1: You do not...DO NOT, base a horror film on the tooth fairy myth. 2: Rats in the cellar are not that scary. In fact this is fundamentally un-scary. This is what I would expect from the third installment of a bad 90s B-horror franchise, only without the tounge-in-cheek approach but with a bigger budget. Guillermo del Toro needs to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror and ask himself: "Am I lending my name and reputation to the right kind of movies, these days?".

Visually pretty handsome and the story's much more fleshed out than the TV movie, but I thought it was less creepy and just an all around disappointment. The opening scene was a promising start, but the film just isn't scary. In fact, I thought the little creatures were kind of cute when they weren't busy slashing at people with razors and scissor blades.