Emma Caulfield

More than a century ago in the northern Maine town of Darkness Falls, kindly old Matilda Dixon lived alone in the lighthouse and loved children. Every time one lost a tooth, she would give the child a gold coin. But a fire ignited her home one day, leaving her horribly disfigured. After that, she shunned the daylight and took to wearing a white porcelain mask.

Then two children went missing, and townspeople feared the worst. Blaming the reclusive Matilda, they dragged her out of her house, bound her and took her off to be hanged. From the scaffold, she cursed the town: "What I took before in kindness, I will take forever in revenge!" When the two missing children turned up unharmed a day later, the town buried its dark secret.

In the present day, young Kyle Walsh (Joshua Anderson) has heard the story that they tell children who have lost their last baby tooth: if you peek, the Tooth Fairy will get you. But the night he loses his last baby tooth, he leaves it on the dresser. Young Caitlin Greene (Ghost Ship’s Emily Browning) visits him, giving him a first kiss and telling him not to peek.

When the lights go out, Kyle thinks he sees something horrific lurking in the shadows. Creeping out from under the covers, he sees something unbelievable: a cracked porcelain mask staring back at him. He screams for his mother. As Kyle dashes for the light of the bathroom, his mother encounters an unseen horror and meets a terrible end.

Twelve years later, a now-grown Caitlin (Caulfield) calls an adult Kyle (Kley), who still suffers from fear of the dark, though he left Darkness Falls years ago. Caitlin’s young brother, Michael (Cormie), hasn’t slept in weeks and is in the hospital for treatment. Caitlin asks if Kyle will come back to town and help Michael overcome his own night terrors. But when Kyle returns, a mysterious force awakens and begins to stalk him, Caitlin and Michael all over again.

Darkness fails

Darkness Falls, notable for marking the feature-film debut of Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast member Caulfield, is far from toothsome. Based on Harris’ sly 2001 short film Tooth Fairy, Darkness Falls has an intriguing premise and a few atmospheric frights, but squanders these in an otherwise generic creature feature with little bite.

The idea of a vengeful Tooth Fairy is laughable at first, but the film’s early moments nearly breathe real terror into the premise. South-African-born Liebesman and cinematographer Dan Laustsen do a nice job painting the screen with saturated shadows and filling the spaces in between with unearthly gurglings that raise the hair on the back of the neck.

The film also promises a touching relationship between Kyle and Caitlin and a Sixth Sense-style plot involving Michael. But alas, the screenplay by Fasano (Megiddo: The Omega Code 2) et al. fails to deliver on any of it, rapidly decaying into horror movie cliches and a relentless chase through the dark that ends predictably.

Perhaps mistrustful of its own creepiness, Darkness Falls relies too heavily on cheap scares: Things jumping out of the dark, black cats leaping on car hoods, all underscored by a loud "Boo!" on the soundtrack. And the Stan Winston Studios-designed creature is best when not seen, all fluttery batwings and hissing noises.

Liebesman also mishandles the action sequences, overusing hand-held camera, framing too tightly and cutting too quickly, to the point that the action loses comprehensibility. In these scenes, Liebesman’s love of darkness fails him: Much of the time things are just too hard to see.

As for the acting, Kley has some genuine charisma as the tortured Kyle, and Caulfield does her best in the thankless role of the girlfriend-mother-damsel in distress. But neither has much to do besides run and yell "Stay in the light!" Cormie works up a little pathos as a kind of mini-Haley Joel and genuinely looks like he could use a nice nap.