Alright, so anything that bills “The tooth fairy” as the monster in a horror movie I would normally avoid because that’s just stupid but this one was given the tag “understated” and I thought cool, I’ll play a game or read while I watch. The first 30 minutes weren’t bad. This town of Darkness Falls (maybe it’s better than being from a place called Intercourse?) 100 something years ago had this old lady who gave gold coins to the town kids when they lost their last baby tooth. Then there was a fire and her face burned off and she couldn’t stand light anymore. So she became a recluse. These two kids disappear and the townspeople blamed her and they hanged her, apparently without a trial or you know, looking for the missing children. She cursed the town, saying she’d return every time a child lost their last baby tooth to kill them. So she kaks it and like, immediately the kids are found. Most embarrassing thing to happen in that town since they’d pilloried the milkman before discovering you couldn’t get milk from a bull. Live and learn, I suppose.
Modern times. This boy loses his last baby tooth. He looks like he’s in middle school already but I’ll run with it. At home he’s kinda nervous because of the stories told about what happens to kids on this day. If every person who loses all their baby teeth gets killed, wouldn’t there be no town anymore? Anyway, this girl comes in through his window and there’s an awkward/sweet scene where he asks her to the school dance and she kisses him. She sees the tooth, tells him to man up and puts it under his pillow and leaves. He goes to sleep. There’s a noise and here’s our introduction to the supernatural element of the story. He grabs a flashlight and shines it on a phantom of the opera mask attached to a collection of rags. It’s actually not a bad effect. The light drives her away and he runs for it. His mother gets up only to be dragged into her darkened bedroom to be brutally murdered because apparently the tooth fairy goes after anyone who sees her. Why? I don’t know, she’s just random that way as we see later on. The boy (maybe his name was Kyle? I’m gonna go with Kyle) hides in the bathroom with the lights on. Scary sounds, the ghost hovers outside the door but can’t go in.
Next day, the whole town watches as the police take Kyle in for murdering his mother. Which doesn’t make nearly enough sense. I would have assumed that she had surprised a burglar not that her pre-pubescent boy had gone crazy and slashed her to death with an unknown weapon that is no longer to be found. This is the first indication that maybe this movie might rather suck. The police mutter that everyone knew Kyle had “problems” though they never elaborate. The girl (Kate) and a couple other kids, look on in apathy.
Twelve years later and someone how everyone is about 30. Kate has turned into Emma Caulfield and she’s taken her 9 (!?) year-old brother Michael to the hospital because he’s terrified of the dark and can’t sleep longer than ten minutes at a time. The doctors tell her it’s because he’s a little boy and they’re like that. Okay.
Kyle is living a huge industrial looking apartment and I am very jealous. What sort of job does he have? He’s been drawing the tooth fairy over and over again and taping it to his wall and he never leaves home without a duffle bag full of flashlights. If he ever leaves the light, the tooth fairy will get him because she never abandons her prey. He also takes a ton of pills. Kate calls him because she wants to know how he got over his fear of the dark. He hasn’t but since she actually wasted her time tracking him down after not bothering for twelve years he may as well come see her brother anyway.
He arrives at the hospital and she sort of implies that the same thing that happened to Kyle has happened to Michael (you know, losing their last baby tooth, which you’d think she would’ve gone through at some point) and she asks him to help. He talks to Michael who has also been drawing pictures of the tooth fairy. These things only ever seem to happen to people with artistic skills. Michael asks if things get better when you grow up and Kyle lies his ass off.
Kyle is all about rekindling the flame that was budding when he and Kate were in elementary school but that hope is dashed when Larry shows up. We know he’s one of the kids from the police scene twelve years ago because both actors wear glasses. He’s a lawyer and he’s possibly in some relationship with Kate. Anyway they hug and Kyle looks bummed so I guess? Kate stays at the hospital and Larry insists he and Kyle go out to dinner to catch up.
Here I was expecting, like, a restaurant or a diner, or even an IHOP but instead we get what appears to be a biker bar. Dark wood, beer signs and a pool table. Larry offers to get them both a beer but Kyle doesn’t drink because of the truckload of pills he downs every few hours. So Larry, in the movie’s attempt at humor, gets him a light beer. He also informs the redneck denizens at the bar of who’s finally come back to town and one plaid clad fellow takes serious offense. He immediately starts harassing Kyle, trying to pick a fight. Because he knew Kyle’s mother…because they… it affected him…he…? No, I don’t know. Kyle leaves and Larry can’t be bothered because those two beers aren’t going to drink themselves.
Out in the woods (!?) Kyle gets attacked by Mr. Plaid who has either built up twelve years of seething hatred over the death of someone else’s mother or just really, really wants to wrestle. Kyle loses his flashlight and they end up in the dark. The tooth fairy attacks…the redneck. So he gets slaughtered. Larry has gotten off his lazy backside and…called the police? Who actually come out in full force because there’s nothing better to do on a Thursday night but break up a possible scuffle. They’re running through the woods and Larry has dead redneck drop on him. So Kyle gets arrested because it’s exactly the way his mother died twelve years ago.
Okay, the first half hour of the movie wasn’t bad but this has progressively been getting stupider.
Kyle is in the local jail. Back at the hospital, Michael gets attacked by the tooth fairy again and Kate finds him cowering in the showing with his arms cut up. The doctor tells Kate that lack of sleep has caused her brother to experience a minor psychotic break and that if something isn’t done he will only get worse. Fortunately they have an effective cure. Sensory deprivation. In order to force him to confront his fears and recognize them as harmless. I shit you not. They want to put a nine-year-old boy who is afraid of the dark in a sensory deprivation tank. It’s not like that will push him further over the edge or cause a major psychotic break or allow a monster to rip his face off. No, it will show him that he’s being foolish. I just...Right. Kate agrees.
Larry bails Kyle out of jail after having cleaned himself of dead guy and takes him to a gun store where Kyle buys every flashlight in the place and possibly steals a gun. They start driving off and Kyle, in a fit of bad writing, becomes convinced that someone is going to force Michael into the dark and wants to head back to the hospital. Larry is having none of it so Kyle pulls the gun on him. Larry hits the brakes hard and Kyle goes through the windshield because being a tortured main character who never catches a break means not wearing your seat belt. He’s fine, of course. Larry, however, gets grabbed by the tooth fairy, who, like a cat with a mouse, plays with him for a bit before finally offing him. Kyle takes the chance to get in the car and drive off.
Back at the hospital Michael is just about to go into sensory deprivation, which looks an awful lot like an MRI machine, when Kyle shows up and yells at Kate to stop them. She does, deciding to believe the crazy person she hasn’t seen since he was a kid and was accused of killing his mother over her brother’s doctors. Actually in this case I think I would too. Suddenly the police, who must have some sort of radar to inform them anytime someone in their jurisdiction drops dead, shows up to arrest Kyle for murdering Larry. He goes back to jail.
The police officers refuse to believe that an escaped denizen from hell is after Kyle (imagine that). A storm rolls in, lightening flashing, thunder booming and the lights in the whole town go out. The lighthouse beam dies. (Oh yeah, there’s a lighthouse.) The police station gets attacked. Or I should say, everyone in the police station, except Kyle the intended prey, gets attacked. Finally it’s only Kyle and one cop left and the cop finally believes that maybe Kyle was right about the evil spirit that everyone in the town knew about from tales and has been killing kids for over a century.
Hospital. Kate and Michael run around, Kyle shows up and they and two nurses and a doctor regroup in a corridor. The doctor says the emergency generator will give them light for another couple of minutes. I’m sorry but I call bullshit. It’s an emergency generator for a hospital for crying out loud. They’re made so people on respirators and such don’t die during power outages. Why does this one only last a few minutes? And where are all the other people? Did the tooth fairy kill everyone in the building before coming after the two she really wants? Anyway, much running around while the characters try to be dramatic about staying in small patches of light and making really stupid decisions. Unsurprisingly, the three hospital workers get picked off. That’s really all they were there for, to provide the monster with fodder other than the main characters. The cop manages to break through the brick wall of the hospital with his SUV and Kate, Michael, and Kyle pile in.
Okay, this next part is deeply stupid. They decide to make for the lighthouse so they can fill it with fuel and turn it on. The tooth fairy attacks and they badly fight her off with heavy-duty flashlights that manage to break easier than most eggs. There is much screaming while I think to myself, “Why don’t you just turn the interior lights on? And then you could drive until you find a town that still has power and sit in the parking lot of one of those strip malls where the lights are always on.” For that matter, why aren’t the flashes of lightening driving her away? Why does she kill some people immediately and others she swings around like some sort of demented carnival ride? Why didn’t Kyle, years ago, lure her into a room with him and then turn on the lights? Never mind.
They make it to the lighthouse where everyone continues to demonstrate their complete inability to hold onto important life-saving objects for longer than ten seconds. They fill the generator and start up the light. Of course it goes out because there is a leak in the fuel line. The cop tries to fix it and dies. Kyle tries to fix it and manages to set the floor on fire. Yay, light! But no, not enough? Jeezit. He needs to flip a switch which should not have been so hard to reach. This lighthouse was built to fend off mildly retarded terrorists or something. Michael, being small, is able to get at the switch after much bother. The resulting flood of light annoys the tooth fairy but she still manages to grab Kyle. She hauls him up into the air where they struggle and Kyle pulls off her mask exposing her sensitive burned face with an, “I can see you, Bitch!” I am regretting this being one of those movies where the main characters survive. The tooth fairy dies. Again. The three sit in the light, leaning against each other, happy to have survived the supernatural and their own monumental ineptness.
Last scene. A boy who has just lost a tooth puts it under his pillow. The movie tries to fake us out but it’s only his mom who exchanges the tooth with a quarter while kissing him good night. The End.
I finally managed to donate blood at the hospital today. I've been trying to find time for a couple weeks but that's done and I'm good until the end of march. The woman who works there is very friendly and I enjoy talking with her. I live so close and I have no problems with needles, it seems ridiculous not to donate. Any one of us could need that stock at some point, better make sure the pantry's full. Plus, I got a long sleeve shirt! It's red. And cookies. Oreos. I love oreos.
