OK. We've go a strobe light flashing at a baseball that was lost in someone's basement by some kids, who are yammering on about who's going to get it. Eventually this leads to locking this kid in the basement, which, honestly, strikes me as pretty darn well lit and with a lower monster population than most. Of course, from the sound of things, it does have The Noid living in it, and apparently a big murderous shadow of some kind.

Moving along, we suddenly have a kid skateboarding to the accompaniment of some yodeling. Kid wanders into a house which may or may not be his, and slowly starts creeping up on a medieval peasant doing some spot-welding in the basement. OK, fine, it's his mom. Also, this kid is apparently so much of a wimp that he won't walk into his own basement, in the middle of the day, where his mom is working and talking to him, because it's slightly dark. OK, I mean, granted, this is a horror movie, and we've already had a murderous basement monster see an introduction, but it's not like he knows that!

Anyway, there's a bit of a brownout, adding to the already overwhelming orange look to things, he's going to hang out with his dad... and I'm getting the impression this kid has two stay-at-home parents here... also the words Screener Copy Only just appeared along the bottom of the screen, which is somewhat odd for something I got off netflix. Anyway, dad is now officially calling kid out on being such a wimp about darkness. He's also allergic to dogs and just generally a huge dork. Meanwhile, here's Older Brother hanging out in his room with his girlfriend. This is another one of these movies that starts off REAL slow. The last time I had one of these though, it eventually lead up to half an hour of solid action with bug swarms, and a monkey knife fight, so let's stick with things!

So anyway, girlfriend flirts with Little Brother to mess with Older Brother's head a bit... and seriously, these people constantly keep every room in their house lit with the sort of crazy dim lighting that gives you severe eyestrain. Apparently they do this for the benefit of their total loser son, and also because they're crazy cheapskates about their electric bill. Oh hey, Little Brother is checking out the nasty claw marks on his shoulder. I guess it was him that was attacked by The Noid earlier, but he had his wimpiness going on full-blast beforehand, so you can't blame in on post traumatic stress. Anyway, the parents (who really do stay home all the time it seems) are finally going out to dinner like they've been preparing to do for the last 15 minutes, while Little Brother legitimately plays uh... the Gamecube Wave Race it seems. And here's that Screener Copy Only popping up again. Meanwhile Older Brother gives some really mixed messages on smoking, and further proves what tightwads everyone in this family seem to be. Also, man, I really can't stress enough what a whiny little baby of a main character we have here. It's heavily implied that there is, in fact, a hideous monster plotting to kill him this very night, somewhere in his house, and I still say he's unjustified in his panicky nature. A lot of it is casting really, he's about 4 or 5 years too old to be sympathetic I say.

Anyway, as much as a wimp as he is about the dark, he IS willing to watch Evil Dead it seems. Or at least, he's willing to flip back and forth between Evil Dead and Tom and Jerry, which is weirdly appropriate honestly. Also, how is this kid watching Evil Dead? It is NOT the sort of thing you ever have on TV, especially what with the tree rape scene, and this whole family seems too lame to rent it. Oh, OK. Apparently the TV is possessed, and is periodically turning itself on and switching to Evil Dead. So far the TV is my favorite character in the movie. Yeah yeah, Screener Copy Only. It'd be interesting if this turned out to be an intentional part of my movie experience that really paid off down the road.

So anyway, little brother, who, again, is like 13 or 14 minimum, is having his older brother look under beds and in closets for monsters. OK, again, he's legitimately been attacked by- oh OK. There apparently legitimately WAS a monster in his closet, which jumped out and dashed through the room before it could really register for the characters... and we also just got treated to a nice little subliminal glimpse of some demon think looking in through the window. We've also got some weird evil folk art all around the house, and things are getting all warpy and freaky as the power goes out. So yeah, you're surrounded by pure evil, but I still say you could be a LITTLE more adult about it.

Anyway, it's established that Little Brother is specifically afraid of "the dark." As in, according to him, concentrated darkness itself is a malevolent sentience that means him ill. He also seems to be demonstrably correct in this regard. Kind of an interesting concept. Anyway, Older Brother, who is totally reasonable and calm, heads up into the attic to find some emergency lights dad bought because of Little Brother's wimpy outbursts. They're apparently right up next to the evil ventriloquist's dummy. OK. I can dig the evil looking folk art, but anyone who brings a ventriloquist's dummy into their home clearly WANTS their family dead. I'm going to toss out the theory that the parents in this movie are evil cultists and MAYBE Little Brother's just tweaking out because he's heard the sounds of human sacrifice one too many times. Anyway, yeah, it's an evil living dummy (like ALL dummies), and Older Brother is now locked in the attic with it.

Meanwhile, Little brother is running around grabbing every battery powered light he can find, and fashioning himself this set of flashlight covered armor that, seriously, makes him look like he's cosplaying as a Warhammer space marine, to confront his closet monster. Ooh, and we've also got some of those wall faces. You know, the faces that bulge out from behind the wall paper? We've also got all kinds of evil public domain sound effects going off, and basically, the whole house is flipping out to the sort of degree you'd see in some of the freakier moments of, well, House. Anyway, the two brothers bump into each other, and Older Brother starts chewing Little Brother out for being a wimp. OK, dude? At any other time, I'd totally be on board, but surely you must have noticed by now that your house has dropped the veil and is going full-on blatantly evil all around you by now. LB's behavior is currently fully justified. You on the other hand are in some kind of freaky denial.

OB notices LB's crazy light suit.. and LB is mentioning a new fear. Of ladders. "They can grab your feet through the holes and pull you through, and eat you. It's what they do." Man, ladders must be from the same category of monsters as gazebos or something. LB has been pretty spot on so far though, so I'm open to the possibility that by the end of this movie someone may, in fact, be eaten by a ladder. Anyway, the evil has gone into remission for the moment, Girlfriend calls for some idle chitchat where LB roves around and inspects the seriously evil looking folk art collection. An undead predator fetish slices his fingers open with a spear when he gets all up in its grill. OB gets the bandaids out because again, he's totally in denial here.

Now, I have to point out that while we do, clearly, have evil malevolent forces here, they set the bar really low on their hijinks. Periodically they give this one kid a little scratch. That seems to be the full extent of their malevolence. Oh, and we are now going into flashback mode, explaining that when LB was young enough to have an excuse, he had a basement monster attack apparently. Not the one that started the movie, an unrelated incident... and not even while it was particularly dark. Anyway, while this is being exposited, the the brothers here some freaky devil dog clawing on the floorboards sounds from the living room, and look inside to see that the evil forces of darkness have REARRANGED THEIR FURNITURE! That's uh... that's pretty profoundly non-scary, really. Especially when they blink and it reverts. Apparently though THIS is what makes Older Brother accept what's up here. Being locked in the attic by an evil dummy, all the horrible sounds, having a closet monster run past him, none of these are registering for him, but feng shui? We're all gonna die man!

Or maybe not, because now he's chewing little brother out over the massive claw scratch on the newly painted wall, about 8 feet up. OB has a really inconsistent relationship with reality, which I think really hurts the movie honestly. Anyway, OB goes to answer a knock at the door, baseball bat and flashlight in hand, but, nobody's there. Also, LB has no excuse for leaving OB's side, because the freakiness really seems to be leaving both of them alone when they're together, plus it'd kill his whole "you must have done that!" excuse parade. Anyway, LB's sitting around with zerglings breathing heavily in the background, while LB wanders into the totally out of focus kitchen, the lights almost flicker back on, and the hallway does this crazy stretchy thing again. Also, some high energy music kicks in, as... 3 guys in nice clothes start walking up the extended hallway. OK, presumably they're demons, but they'll like, really stylish demons. LB apparently has a total breakdown, because the lights briefly come back on BEFORE the Demons In Black charge out to grab him and go all Jacob's-ladder-twitchy-head. Then he comes to to see his brother, they talk a bit, and the two eventually decide to weather things out through sure-fire kid safety protocol. By which I mean they hide under the covers of the nearest bed with a couple flashlights. LB describes the DIBs as "like a dracula, dressed like a cowboy."

OK, so, at this point we are flat out accepting Little Kid Irrational Fears and Countermeasures as abject reality. Of course, the Cowboy Dracula whose footsteps can be heard creeping up on them turns out to just be Girlfriend arbitrarily breaking in. We are back down to terror level 0 while chatting with her. Anyway, Girlfriend decides to totally patronize LB and his monster countermeasures, which is a good idea both if we're accepting that yes, there are monsters, as the kid clearly has his act together in dealing with them, or if we're denying them, since showing off calms him down. Somehow they get into this weird conversation though where Girlfriend starts expressing her deep-rooted fear of packs of wild dogs. She also puts forth the theory, presumably still humoring him, that this might be one of those deals where the monsters draw power off your fear generating a feedback loop of evil, like the boogieman in that episode of the Ghostbusters cartoon, or the Republicans. I was thinking that that might be the case already here myself for some time now. But anyway, things stay pretty calm for a while, LB falls asleep, and Girlfriend comes out to talk to OB. So, are you two feeling makey-outy tonight? Huh. No. They're seriously discussing the possibility of evil stuff around. Well, OB does. Girlfriend is in full on psychoanalyst mode.

Now she's getting into how crazy dark all fairy tales and children's stories are, and how that whole "if I should die before I wake" prayer is just plain #$%^ed Up. Incidentally, how late is the restaurant their parents went to open for? There's been a crazy storm going on, it's gotta be at LEAST 10 or 11 by now, the sun was still out when they left. You'd figure they'd at least call to check in on their little wimp of a kid who, from the persistent blackout, they must be aware is losing it. Anyway, while the big kids discuss jungian psychology or whatever, Cowboy Dracula comes in to rip LB's bed to pieces while he's hiding under it. So, I guess the blankets only grant protection from evil when you're actually IN the bed. Also, seriously? Hiding under your bed? Under beds are such dens of evil that the most intellectual superior nation on the planet (Japan) had them publicly outlawed, forcing citizens to just keep their mattresses right on the floor. You NEVER crawl under a bed when evil is afoot. You don't even look under there. You only hide under the bed as a last ditch defense against mobsters, on the hope that they're too scared of the pure evil to look, but they never are. Aren't you supposed to be crazy genre savvy?

So yeah, Cowboy Dracula is throttling the kid, while OB is tripping down the stairs to get to the generator he really should have cranked up hours ago. See, had he gone down there forever ago, the forces of darkness wouldn't have had time to build up to be a real threat. They'd probably freak him the heck out and sabotage the generator, but at least we'd know it was off the table. Now it's peak hours, so you've got a death wish trying. LB scares off Cowboy Dracula with an annoying toy truck that lights up at least, forcing him to turn into a shadow and slide into the closet to regroup.

LB sets up a battery powered net-light trap to capture and kill Cowboy Dracula, while OB is literally attacking the darkness with Mom's blowtorch, Girlfriend is trying to get the door to LB's room open, and the attic dummy has apparently turned into this ghoulish hag-zombie, which, seriously, is SO much less creepy than its original dummy form. Oh, I stand corrected, it's The Darkness that became a zombie, meanwhile Girlfriend is menaced by dogs, confirming that yes, we are officially dealing with one or more Fear-Feedback monsters. OB apparently loses it around cockroaches thusly, LB has to confront a deadly ladder to get down and save him... and dude, 2 dobermans is so not a pack of wild dogs. Even if they can teleport. Anyway, LB starts up the generator and all outstanding monsters evaporate.

So anyway, crisis averted, parents come home, Screener Copy Only does too, chitchat occurs... we're still do a final scare though. Especially since LB has officially passed his wimpiness on to his older brother via this whole ordeal. So, more bugs, or the zombie, or the dummy, taking bets... and it's... huh! Cowboy Dracula! You know, I have to say, Cowboy Dracula was honestly the single least scary thing in the entire movie. Especially after I was given the excuse to start calling him that.

So.. yeah. I'm not really sure what to make of this overall. It's pretty darn intense for being clearly a Horror For Kids movie, it actually has some pretty good visuals here and there, particularly the whole hallway perspective distortion bit, but ultimately, I'm bothered a ton by how shallow the whole thing is. Here's a bunch of stuff that freaks little kids out. The end. They toy with a really weird premise, then they throw it out for the fairly old-hat Fear Feedback Monster deal, and then they make no real attempt to resolve that. Just, ignore'em and they can't bother you. Good night. I was kind of hoping that would yield an interesting plot twist.