Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

This is as dismal as you heard. In my view, the only way the film could have worked is: no backstory, no more than 10 minutes devoted to who is who of the characters, and have the rest as frantic horror up and down the old dark house, part gleeful sendup part purely kinetic action in the vein of old Raimi and Gordon. Instead of nasty violence, gooey fun. And scrape anything that isn't of the funhouse ride. This goes on the premise that we see the silly critters, which means you have to exploit the inanity to your advantage.

This yanks us in too many useless directions; especially the childhood trauma and notion of a scary (submerged) world of juvenile imagination, which was likely Del Toro's Spanish contribution to the project and just pulls in a half-serious, contrived direction.

This is pointless as we have it.