Tooth Fairy's a bitch. According to town legend she sometimes takes the whole kid
instead of just a tooth. I sure wish that happened in the movie.

As a thrill seeking brat I used to go outside at night and picture the scariest thing I could imagine lurking in the trees just beyond the porch light. It was a giant green disembodied eye. Then I'd dare myself to go as far out into the darkness away from the house as I could before I'd get too scared to take another step. I gather that a lot of people still get that stomach-squirming nervous tingle from horror movies, but sadly I have become immune. The last time I got that feeling was when an actual live bear walked out in front of me one night on the way back from my postbox. It smelled me and took off at full speed, and in the darkness all I heard was charging bear and couldn't tell if it was running away or STRAIGHT FOR ME. So yes shipmates, I have run from a bear.

I'm telling you this because tonight's movie has a scene right at the start that just for a second almost took me back there - to the big green eye I mean, not the bear - when the kid's under the sheets and that ghost is in his room silently menacing him. Just a beautiful shot; got a tear of nostalgia in my cynical old eye.

So right about then I was thinking hey, this movie and I are on a good date, but that's all there was. The magic flickered for a brief moment and was gone.

The frustrating bit is this movie knows how to do it and then deliberately witholds love by swapping in a rampaging monster movie instead of showing us the rest of Darkness Falls. Now of course I love rampaging monster movies, but this was a ghost movie; do I need to point out there's a difference? Ghost stories must be told with atmosphere, subtlety and suggestion, and instead we get ghost action combat. As far as I'm concerned when a ghost becomes corporeal and engages in fisticuffs then the movie has basically become an episode of Scooby Doo. I swear that's my last Scooby Doo joke. Wait there's one more in a review I haven't put up yet, but after that NO MORE.

The porcelain masked witch ghost is actually pretty cool looking, but we see so much of it that it becomes commonplace. Okay though so it's a monster movie; we could still sort be of friends if you have the witch sacking up youngsters, boiling them in a cauldron and eating them without utensils. But no, mustn't harm the kiddies even though that's what the whole damn legend is about. Let's have a big battle royale with the cops instead just to make sure we've stamped out every last ember of the movie's premise.

I've heard that the picture was originally much better but was destroyed by studio executives who wouldn't know a horror movie from a box of Frankenberry cereal. I don't know if that's true, but considering one can generally count on the fingers of a novelty foam "we're #1" hand the sum of quality big studio horror films released in an average year I tend to believe it. Make your own movie. I'd rather see the real movie done with Star Wars action figures and finger puppets if that's all you can afford. Make your own movie.