Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is one of the least obvious horror remakes to hit cinemas in the last few years. Unlike Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street or even, say, Black Christmas, there is little built-in awareness for an existing property for the marketing guys to hang a campaign on and reel an audience in with. It’s not that the original movie is a complete obscurity, but let’s face it – a 38-year-old American TV movie is unlikely to mean much to your average cinema-goer. Which is maybe part of the reason it has taken producer/co-writer Guillermo del Toro so long to bring his update to the screen. Del Toro has often cited John Newland’s 1973 film as one of his favourite chillers, and he wrote his script way back in the 1990s; however it was only with the industry power that came from the mainstream success of the Hellboy films and the international acclaim of Pan’s Labyrinth that he was finally able to get it financed.

Guy Pearce plays Alex, an ambitious architect with a failed marriage behind him and new girlfriend in the shape of Kim (Katie Holmes). Alex’s troubled eight-year-old daughter Sally (Bailee Madison) has been given to him to look after, and so this trio move into his latest project, a labyrinthine, Gothic house which Alex is planning to restore. However, the old house still has some occupants – sealed in the ground beneath a hidden basement are a pack of small, malevolent creatures with an unhealthy interest in children’s teeth.

Although this new take follows the original story pretty faithfully, there is one big change. In Newland’s film it is the wife who is targeted by the creatures; now, the introduction of a young girl as the main protagonist provides an extra family dynamic, and most importantly, brings the movie more in line with del Toro’s Spanish-language hits The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. However, it’s worth noting that del Toro isn’t actually the director – those duties were handed to former comic book artist Troy Nixey, and del Toro has gone out of his way in interviews to stress the creative input and ultimate control that Nixey had over many of the film’s elements. Nevertheless, del Toro’s fingerprints are all over the movie, which ultimately proves both a good and a bad thing.

We begin in familiar but solid territory – arrival at the old house, young girl distrustful of her new stepmum, dad too busy to spend much time with his kid – plus the introduction of a spooky supernatural element. It’s handsomely mounted, striking to look at, decently acted… but it quickly becomes clear that Nixey, del Toro and co-writer Mark Johnson aren’t planning on giving us much more. It’s almost impossible to watch Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and not think of those other, much better Guillermo movies (plus films he produced, like The Orphanage). Madison does a good job in her role, ably conveying a child’s anger and incomprehension at her messed-up family situation, and later on, the fear at the miniature evil that she has unleashed upon the house. But it’s hard to care much about the domestic set-up that the creators are clearly hoping to win our sympathies with. It’s all just too clichéd and surface level, with Pearce and Holmes playing stock characters in a generic horror movie.

And even more crucially, it’s just not very scary. The creatures are neatly designed, and some of the early sequences, as they stalk Sally and whisper sinister threats at night, are pretty effective. But once they are revealed in full around the halfway point, that’s kind of it for the tension – these ugly beasties are just too damn small to be truly threatening, even when attacking en masse. As the title suggests, there’s a lot of darkness (the creatures are repelled by light), but never much mystery or threat, and some of the ‘horror’ spills over into unintended comic territory – “there’s been an accident!” shouts the unfortunate groundskeeper in the understatement of the year, as he emerges from the cellar, having been clawed to bits with a pair of scissors sticking out of his back.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is certainly better than much studio horror and maybe it’s unfair to keep comparing it to the producer’s other, more personal films. Nixey does a decent job with the material, but it all feels too safe and ordinary for adult horror fans, and yet too bloody for a younger audience who might identify with the lead character. It’s a solid one-watch, but I can’t imagine it ever being anything more than a footnote to del Toro’s – and perhaps even Nixey’s – filmography.