Guillermo del Toro loves horror. He is even good a co-writing it as the Strain books proved. The Devil’s Back Bone was a decent stab at a ghost story and “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ had it’s moments. Pacific Rim gave a nod to the Godzilla movies. But like many bands that think they are metal who are not, liking something and even being influenced by it doesn’t make your music that if that is not what is coming out of your amps when you lightly hit the strings. The strings are hit very lightly here. My first assessment walking out of the theater was this was diet horror. There was ominous music and ghost jumping out, gruesome ghosts by appearance who turned out to be less ghastly than what the living were up to.
I missed a little bit of this movie because I feel asleep. The pace it moved at made it possible for me to pick up where I left off when I woke back up. It was pretty to look at. The bloody ice laid out in front of the gothic mansion was a great shot, as was the snow that drifted into the old house. But the atmosphere here was not enough to scare you like it was in House of the Devil or the Shining. To put it even more simply if you are going to compare this against other horror movies that came this year, I fell asleep during this movie, but I stayed awake for the entire duration of “the Green Inferno”. We did go to an earlier showing of Green Inferno, but it was without question much more tense than this movie. Horror is not all about gore. There were a few bloody moments in this movie, none of the made you wince like Eli Roth can. Hiddleston gets stabbed in the face. But it seemed as this was done gracefully rather than capturing what it would be like to get stabbed in the face.
If you thought Pan’s Labyrinth was a horror movie, then you will more than likely find this movie scary since you do not know what a horror movie is. This film was well acted though thick on the creamy icing of romance almost to the point of having a dynamic like Frozen. Perhaps is one of the ghost had sung “Do You Wanna Build a Snow Man” it would have all clicked into place. I think it is best to adjust ones expectations when going into this and give careful consideration to Del Toro’s track record, while he is not as bad about flirting with horror as Tim Burton, whose fans also want him to make a horror movie, his goal is making something that is a visual spectacle and here he succeeds, I did see the trailer for “the Forest” which looks to be promising, so next year horror might have better luck.
