The Tooth Fairy – DVD
Anchor Bay Entertainment
The Tooth fairy is a modern day horror film that takes a long time children’s icon and turns it into something dark, evil, and deadly. In 1954 a deformed witch who lived in a run down house in a small town would lure kids to her home where she would steal their last remaining baby tooth, which somehow is connected to their souls, and then kill them in ways most violent. This resulted in the poor victims souls being trapped in limbo for as long as the witch was still alive and had possession of their teeth. After vanishing for nearly half a decade and becoming something of a local ghost story, the witch is reawakened after an ex-doctor turned aspiring author buys the old house and fixes it up into a bed and breakfast. He is joined by his estranged fiance and her daughter, as well as a tenant and friend and sure enough, it isn’t long before the killing starts again, but this time its not just the kid that is the target, but its everyone who is in the house.
The kid, Pamela, befriends the ghost of one of the Tooth Fairy’s victims who tells her all about what happened and puts it on Pamela that it is up to her to kill the Tooth Fairy so their souls can finally be set free. As more people associated with the house die in very violent ways, it’s up to Pamela to convince her mom and step-dad to be what needs to be done.
While the story is somewhat interesting, the movie’s biggest fault perhaps lie in the stiff acting and odd pacing. The actors don’t seem to do a very convincing job of conveying any real emotion and there isn’t anything in the story that really make you care about any of the characters in it. When you don’t feel any attachment to anyone in that house, they are simply props waiting to be killed and you not only expect their deaths, but when they happen, you don’t really care. The kid, Pamela, seems to be awfully level headed and mature for someone being stalked by a disfigured witch, especially when she is seeing everyone around her get violently killed. There is also no real back story given as to how this witch really came to be and why. They just sort of glaze over it rather quickly as if it was an afterthought to even include any of it at all.
The one thing the film did right in many cases however was its sort of return to old-school slasher films in the way it presented the gore during the death scenes. They were quite generous with the blood and at the very least with the results of the violent ways these people were killed, even if you don’t always see where the ax was hitting in some scenes, you get to see the results and there is one definite “holy shit” moment that was nearly as humorous as it was gruesome and graphic (if only for a second). Sure there are times when the blood and dismembered bodies look a little too fake, but overall on the gore front this film gets a thumbs up. One other nod to old-school horror was the casting of Halloween victim P.J. Soles as the weird next-door neighbor who seems to know an awful lot about the history of The Tooth Fairy.
The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen and the image is super sharp. The only gripe I have in it was where the layer change takes place was rather disruptive and actually resulted in an interruption in dialog. There are two sound options; 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo. The 5.1 option had a very good mix and had some use of surround effects and rear channel action, though I thought considering the genre, there would have been quite a bit more of that. There is also a commentary track with the producer and one of the film’s stars. The movie is 89 minutes long.
Bonus features are limited to a 15 minute making of feature which is pretty standard fare for that type of thing, and a two minute segment where the stars of the film chime in with their childhood memories of the Tooth Fairy and how much they got from her. Aside from that all you get is the theatrical trailer. There was no deleted scenes or any outtakes.
Overall The Tooth Fairy was a film that seemed to look good on paper but didn’t quite get over as well as it should have in execution. For some mindless drunken fun if you are up for some gore and care not for the story you might find it worth a rental some night, but as far as repeated viewings or being a candidate for someone’s favorite film list, sadly I don’t see it happening.
