Comic-Con 2010: Guillermo Del Toro today premiered the first trailer and the opening scene for new horror film Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark .
The trailer itself weaved together snatches of scenes from the movie without revealing too much (tiny creature hands gripping a grill, a young girl in a bathtub surrounded by spooks). But it ended in a brilliantly-staged jump scare in which young Sally scrambles through bed-sheets only to get the fright of her life (we won’t give it away - suffice to say it's a scream).
Del Toro also revealed the film’s opening scene, which is a prologue to the rest of the film's modern day setting. In it, a maid is lured into the basement of a gothic mansion, and has her teeth bashed in by her boss. He then offers them to creatures living in the furnace (seemingly in payment for the return of his daughter), but meets a decidedly sticky end.
In the grand tradition of the very best horror, this scene relied more on sound and atmosphere than in-your-face gore, and had all 6,000+ Comic-Con attendees squirming in their seats.
No wonder Del Toro calls the film “hard-hitting, scary and classic, with an ending that hits you like a motherfucker”.
A remake of the ‘70s TV movie, the producer notes that he wanted to honour and reformulate the original – “we are not fucking chickening out,” he eruditely pointed out.
He also revealed that while they aimed for a PG-13 rating for the movie, the MPAA came back with an R-rating, saying it received that rating for ‘pervasive scariness’. “For once I didn’t disagree with the MPAA,” Del Toro chuckles.
Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.
