THE DARK hits a nerve as it starts with a couple of bogeymen standing at the stairs of a young child's bedroom one night . I think I speak for everyone who's seen QUATERMASS , DOCTOR WHO or THE X-FILES as a child when I say the scariest place in the world is a bedroom coupled with an overactive imagination . Nostalgia strikes home even more when one of the bogeymen mentions toilet training and " A cold clammy hand on a buttock " ! As a child I often feared that we'd be taken over by an invasion of Sea Devils using a toilet as their bridgehead . Even now I still have panic attacks whenever I hear someone play a stylophone
Unfortunately THE DARK fails to keep up this narrative momentum as the bogeymen depart to a monster club and make small talk . But this is an animated short film which means the animation is probably the most important thing and in that case I was impressed and I'm slightly puzzled as to why it hasn't a better average rating