Don't you just hate it when a film doesn't live up to even a minor 10% of its own great potential? "Fairytale" easily could have been an old-fashioned sinister and atmospheric fable, but due to a variety of reasons (most of them relating to lack of talent) it turned out to be yet another sore disappointment. The film premiered at the annual Brussels Festival of Fantastic Films, and what mainly lured to me to theater was the plot synopsis mentioning the tooth fairy. Personally, I think there's great macabre potential in this theme, but so far this hasn't resulted in any good or even half-decent movies. There's an adequate episode of "Supernatural" devoted to the theme, but the only long-feature horror movie I recall is the mediocre "Darkness Falls". Like that one, "Fairytale" starts off promising but doesn't manage to retain the viewer's attention through lousy character development and inept usage of the splendid set pieces and filming locations. Harriet MacMasters-Green, who's a stunningly beautiful lady but a very implausible concerned single mother, moves into an ancient apartment building with her daughter Helena after her husband left them. The jerk went off to Hawaii for a life of partying and flirting with young gals, in fact. Naturally, the new house comes with an eerie and secretive old wardrobe and a nasty neighbor who claims they shouldn't have come here. After the single worst car crash ever staged on film, which leaves both mother and daughter miraculously unharmed, the house slowly unfolds its mysteries. Helena becomes disturbingly obsessed with the tooth fairy, who actually lived in the building and left her marks inside the wardrobe, but is she really a good spirit
or a restless and tormented soul roaming around? The entire film, or at least the first 75 minutes or so, drags endlessly and everything (acting, direction, coherence
) gradually gets worse. It's almost like a toothache that gets more painful because of infection and lack of care. The denouement brings some improvement, even though the twist ending is still somewhat derivative and predictable. Tales about mythical night creatures and fairies gone ballistic shouldn't be boring. Especially not if they are made in Italy. Whatever happened to this country's awesome horror reputation? And now that we're on the subject, why does everyone speak lousy English instead of plain normal Italian? They read their newspaper articles in Italian, so why don't they speak it?
