‘Afraid of the Dark’ Aims for Mind, Eye

Most thrillers target the guts and viscera. Mark Peploe’s “Afraid of the Dark” (Hillcrest Cinemas) aims for the mind and the eye. It’s a film about how and why we see things as we do, and how those ways of seeing can explode into aggression, murder and madness.

This is a movie packed with horrific bloody imagery. It’s about an ultimate nightmare, one where what we see is completely different from what actually is. Focusing on a small stretch of London, a few city blocks, a house, a graveyard, it gives us a milieu through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy named Lucas (Ben Keyworth), a world which, depending on our shifting angle of vision, is one of cheerful “normality” or omnipresent dangers: serial slashers preying on the blind, malignant prowlers, sex-mad voyeurs.

But we can’t necessarily trust Lucas. An alienated boy with a caring but remote father (James Fox), a warm but ambivalent mother (Fanny Ardent) and an equally ambivalent “crush,” Rose (Clare Holman), Lucas has the pristine, innocent face of a quiet child. He’s a cipher himself, his world a succession of dreams and double meanings. His most loyal friend is a neighborhood dog. Rocking horses, knitting needles, telescopes, flowers, thick-lensed spectacles are all among the curious metaphors around him. And the greatest evil comes from the most unexpected direction.

“Afraid of the Dark” isn’t an intellectually shallow terrorize-the-yuppies shocker. In many ways, it’s a critique of the new contemporary family thrillers, of the ways movies like “Fatal Attraction” or “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” push our buttons and feed our paranoia.

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Peploe, making his directorial debut, is a screenwriter who has specialized in the evanescence of surfaces and the mysteries of identity. Working for directors like Bertolucci, Antonioni or his sister, Clare Peploe (“High Season”), he’s a rare scenarist more well known for his images than his dialogue, one whose scripts seem composed in layers of imagery.

Here, he has an ideal movie-thriller approach, the child’s-eye viewpoint of the great Graham Greene-Carol Reed “Fallen Idol,” but Peploe’s strategy is far more complex. Midway through, he pulls what may seem an outrageous trick, yet it’s justified, a perfectly logical extension of his theme. And “Afraid of the Dark” is a movie very conscious of themes, signs and meaning, visual strategy.

Perhaps too conscious. Themes should sometimes be a bit disguised, and there’s a point at which “Afraid” becomes too explicit, not suggestive enough. Peploe’s images sometimes lack panache and coherence, his handling of the actors is variable. If Fox and Robert Stephens are solid, Ardant is negligible. If Holman gives the movie’s best performance, precisely capturing, as Rose, two contrasting personas, newcomer Keyworth, as Lucas, gets too stiff and inexpressive.

There’s a real movie consciousness about “Afraid of the Dark.” It’s a picture dense with allusions to other films: If the camera pans across lightened windows or “Que Sera Sera” strikes up at a wedding, we recall Hitchcock; a photographer’s erotic high jinks and kinks bring back Antonioni’s “Blow-Up.” More than anything, “Afraid of the Dark” is a movie that suggests how perceptions and misperceptions determine our lives, how fears can rule us, how dangers lie within as well as without. It’s a shame that Peploe the director has failed Peploe the writer; perhaps, next time out, he won’t.

‘Afraid of the Dark’

Ben Keyworth: Lucas

James Fox: Frank

Fanny Ardant: Miriam

Clare Holman: Rose

A Telescope Film/Les Films Ariane presentation of a telescope/Ariane/Cine Cino co-production, released by Fine Line Features. Director Mark Peploe. Producer Simon Bosanquet. Screenplay Peploe, Frederick Seidel. Executive producers Jean Nachbaur, Sylvain Sainderichin, Laura Parker. Cinematographer Bruno De Keyzer. Editor Scott Thomas. Costumes Louise Stjernsward. Music Jason Osborn. Production design Caroline Amies. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (for violence and a scene of sensuality).