Book to Film Review: Fairytale

This is only a sort of book to film review, as the film comes from a fairy tale!

About the film

Fairytale is a horror film that was released on DVD on 14^th January. The film is rated 15 and has a run time of 84 minutes.

Plot

After a recent divorce, Sophia and her daughter Helena move to Latina in the south of Italy. When Helena loses her first baby tooth and Sophia explains all about the tooth fairy leaving her money, she becomes obsessed. Most night she recalls being visited by the tooth fairy, even without having lost any more teeth. Worried about Helena’s strange behaviour, she seeks the advice of a local doctor, only to find out about the sinister past of her new apartment. With Helena’s life in danger, Sophia must find a way to stop the terrible things that are happening.

What I thought

I’m a huge fan of both horror films and fairytales so when I heard about this film, I wanted to watch it immediately. I haven’t seen many films revolving around the idea of the tooth fairy, expect for Del Toro’s ‘Don’t Be Afriad of the Dark’.

Set and filmed in Italy, Fairytale provides a very pretty setting against a dark plot. Main characters Sophia and daughter Helena have just moved to Latina after divorce. The mother and daughter duo appear to be settling in very nicely, having a lovely looking apartment and Sophia appearing to have a good job. It isn’t long before the plot takes a twist though and Helena loses her first tooth only to become obsessed with the idea of the tooth fairy. The plot, unfortunately, was pretty basic. Girl loses tooth, tooth fairy has some wicked intentions. Whereas Del Toro’s idea of the tooth fairy was very dark and twisted, I thought that this film was very unoriginal. The idea of the tooth fairy was basically taken from other horror films and just given a different name.

However, although the plot was basic and not at all unique, it was pretty creepy. Maybe not completely scary but it did make me shudder a couple of times. The effects were pretty basic throughout the film, without any really shocking scenes that could be very scary. While there are one or two scenes which could really freak some people out, Fairytale is a film that relies on the story of the tooth fairy and the idea the story told to you as a child is far from the truth. Here, the thought of the tooth fairy being evil is where the horror comes in. Unfortunately though, the weak plot wasn’t enough to make this truly terrifying.

Not only was the plot weak but acting skills were pretty poor. Playing Sophia is Harriet MacMasters-Green. During the moments where Sophia is just playing a normal Mum, she does ok. She makes it believable that she is Helena’s mother, and that she cares. However, when the plot really kicks in and things begin to get a bit strange, her performance was extremely lacking. Very little concern was shown towards what was happening and she looked pretty bored most of the time. As Sophia finds out about past events in her apartment, I expected utter shock from MacMasters-Green but I didn’t feel this at all. While MacMasters-Green does attempt to be scared, to be worried and to think of a solution to everything, she was just really bland.

Luckily, this film runs at just over an hour and 20 minutes long. I’m not sure that I could have put up with it for much longer than that. As for the ending, it was completely expected from me. While it is clear that this was supposed to be a pretty big twist, I saw it coming a mile off and not find it remotely shocking or different. Again, filmmakers believe they are attempting to do something new and different but really, they’re just using the same tried and tested methods in a different setting. I wish that Fairytale had a much more exciting ending and one that I hadn’t been expecting. This, at least, would have saved the film a little for me.

I absolutely cannot recommend this film and wish I hadn’t wasted my time on it.