Fear of the Dark (2003)

Great Film overall

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I usually don't expect much from movies but this flick still manages to disappoint.First of all, it's not a horror movie.Not only does no one die, no one even gets hurt.Not to mention that nothing scary happens.This movie is basically a children's movie without the compelling plot.The entire movie is about two kids being left at home on a night when there's a thunderstorm.It's literally ninety minutes of one kid whining while the other one tells him to shut up.There's no plot or villain, just non-stop kiddie crap.While it wasn't exactly boring, it just wasn't worth watching.This is a movie that you don't need to see.

Production companies will do anything to get people to watch their movies, that's why the trailer almost always looks good, and the description on the back of the box is so eloquently written, but how often does the film live up to the hype? In the case of Fear of The Dark, it doesn't even come close! 12 year old, Ryan Billings (Jesse James), has an acute fear of the dark and his whole family thinks he's crazy. His parents rarely go out, but on one stormy night they decide to do so, leaving Ryan home alone with his older brother, Dale (Kevin Zegers), who comes to realize, his brother isn't so crazy after all. A creepy cover, a cool trailer, and an interesting description lead me to this film, even with the PG-13 rating. Some of the scariest supernatural horror film were rated PG-13, so i convinced myself, this would be a good choice. While the film has no affiliation with R.L. Stine, it is as much a Goosebumps tale as every other one of his stories. I was worried about the PG-13 rating, when the film doesn't even live up to that. How the company convinced the academy to give this film anything more than a PG rating is beyond me. Fear of The Dark has got to be the most tame and dull horror film I've ever seen. That being said, kids would absolutely love it, but it wasn't marketed to them and the creepy cover and PG-13 rating is exactly what would have kept them from this film. As for the performances, the two young actors were as you would expect, both Jesse James and Kevin Zegers, have look resumes as child actors and have done a ton of films like this and know exactly what their doing. Fear of The Dark is market towards teens and young adults when it should be in the children section. If you have kid, this is the kind of horror film you want them watching. As for me, I was utterly disappointed and shocked that a film like this would be marketed towards young adults.

I thought the concept was good, the spookiness was there, the thrill of "what's in the shadows" was pretty real, but 80% of the movie is carried by two actors, a pre-teen and a pre-adult. I feel they did a good job of acting but they were in no way good enough to carry the movie. Too many times, the young boy is scared (unconvincingly) and his older brother is yelling at him to "settle down, settle down"...8 or 9 times of this gets very old and would take supreme acting to sell it to me.I'm by no means a movie creator, so I can't say whose fault this next problem belongs to (probably the writer), but when the parents left, they told the older brother about the generator AND the young boy even said, "Dad, I can hear you". So both boys know about the generator (especially the young boy who has the absolute fear of the dark). Yet, well after the darkness has set in and the boys are scared and confused and running throughout the house, at no point did it occur to them to turn on the generator. This frustrated me through the whole darkness sequence and doubly frustrated me when the generator was turned on and ended the whole thing. At least have them turn it on and find something wrong with it. This would have been enough to make me not worry about it anymore.You'll watch it once, but only once.

i love this movie i watched it over and over again the boys did wonderful jobs and it is a movie younger kids shouldn't watch especially ones who are superstitious because i am and i myself got scared of the dark for a while but this movie is more then what i expected and the cast was great!and this time it was better because it was kids and not adults which made it more interesting!i loved the movie and most people may think it isn't all that good or great but i do i watched it over and over again and still liked it its like a movie you can watch then say hey lets watch fear of the dark tonight and say the same thing to somebody else a different night!