Del Toro Will Make You Afraid of the Dark!

(eery music)

When I was a kid I saw the original TV movie

and it freaked me out.

It was a truly golden time

for TV movies.

I think we have visitors.

Visitors?

Mice.

I thought I saw something in the kitchen.

(screams)

But it was something like this

little ferocious animal grabbed at my dress.

I was equally afraid of the Zuni Fetish Doll

in Trilogy of Terror because they were small

but incredibly persistent enemies.

Now what happened is

we're talking about pre media days.

So once you saw a movie as a kid,

you kind of didn't see it again until

they showed it again, you didn't know.

You had no way of playing it back.

So over the decades, the movie grew in my head

like a mythology.

So about 20 years later,

I saw it again, finally.

And I realized that what half of the movie

I haven't been to.

I have dreamt of another movie

that was not that movie.

Different moments, different mythology.

And I started to pursue the rights and so forth.

And it took me 13 years

of persistence to make this movie,

but about almost two decades between tracking the rights,

finding who owned them and making the movie

to get it made

because I beieve we are retelling the story.

We're not remaking the movie.

It is the same basic structure that

was in the old TV movie,

but it all changes once you make it sort of a

fairytale horror story

with a young girl in the middle

as opposed to an adult woman in the middle.

The movie has no profanity, no nudity,

no gore,

no graphic violence.

So we thought we were going to get a PG-13

and we got an R.

We said, What can we do?

Why are you doing it?

They said, No matter what you do,

the movie will always get an R because it's too scary.

It deals with primal childhood fears

in a really strong way.

(screams)

(eery music)