Last Updated on October 2, 2021 by Sean Donlevy
Don’t be afraid of the dark (2010), but officially launched in 2010 is a movie directed by Troy Nixey and stars Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, Bailee Madison.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is rated R by the MPAA for violence and terror.
There are some scenes in the movie that may not be suitable for children.
When it comes to sex and nudity, there isn’t much in this movie. The only scene is when Sally, takes a bubble bath but her body is completely covered by the suds. When she then climbs out of the tub, the camera only shows her legs.
When it comes to violence, the movie has more of that. In the movie, several characters are slashed and stabbed by creatures wielding sharp objects. Furthermore, a man attacks a woman to remove her teeth, and as he grimaces, his bloody gums is showcased, after having removed his own teeth. He then carries on to force a chisel into her mouth and brings down a hammer to remove her teeth, but this is not shown in the movie. This builds on the theme of the movie which is that the creators are supposed to remind of some kind of tooth fairies that feed off of children’s teeth.
A character in the movie is dragged into a shoot by a rope, and lastly, in the movie, a creature is bashed into a gory corpse with a camera. There is frequent portrayals of non-graphic violence, brief portrayals of graphic violence. There is also depicting of fighting.
What most viewers find most disturbing and frightening is that it consists of a lot of jump scares.
In one scene, several characters drink alcohol. The language is relatively clean, but there is some use of mild cursing and profanity.
Writer Guillermo del Toro said this about the movie:
“By agreement, we shot a movie with no sex, no gore or profanity, because we thought it was the way to avoid ‘R’,” del Toro said. “The MPAA came back and said, it didn’t matter, that it would be rated ‘R’ anyway, for `pervasive scariness,’ which in a way is fantastic to hear.”
“We shot the movie carefully — no profanity, no sex — and it’s not graphic at all. There’s not a single moment when you see anything gory, but when we asked the MPA, ‘What would it need to change?’ they said, ‘The whole movie. It’s too intense . . . it’s intensity with a child.’ And frankly, at that point, they said something really nice! They said, ‘Why ruin a perfectly good R-rated movie?’ Which I thought was very nice coming from them. So we wore it as a badge of honor.”