The new Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark poster is pretty ugly

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Guillermo del Toro and Troy Nixey’s DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK will be coming at us in a little over a month, but there’s no reason to get excited based on this new one-sheet, which appears courtesy of MTV. I’m kind of shocked that this movie, which looks to be a serious freakout based on all of the materials previously released, has been given a poster this shoddy. It doesn’t tell you anything about the film, and it’s ugly to boot. If this were hanging in a theater, you’d probably walk past it without thinking twice. Very odd…

Thankfully, the initial poster (seen to the right) and the trailers still give us the heebie-jeebies; there’s no way we’re missing this thing when it comes out in August.

The movie’s synopsis: Blackwood Manor has new tenants. While architect Alex Hurst (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes) restore their Gothic mansion’s period interiors, Alex’s young daughter Sally (Bailee Madison)—neglected by her real mother and brushed aside by the careerist father—can investigate the macabre history and dark corners of the estate. Spurring Sally’s investigation are the voices—rasping whispers who call out to her from the basement, who promise her understanding and friendship, who are so very hungry and would like to be set free. When Sally gives in to her curiosity, she opens a gateway into a hellish underworld from which an army of beady-eyed, sharp-clawed monsters emerge, small in size but endless in number: the homunculi. Confronted with the horror that now threatens to taker her life and destroy her family, Sally desperately tries to warn the whole house, but there’s just one problem: no one believes her. Will she make them understand in time, or will they become another chapter in the centuries-long horror story of Blackwood Manor?

Starring Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce and Bailee Madison, DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK hits theaters on AUGUST 26th.