Afraid of the Dark left me with the impression that several different screenplays were written, all too short for a feature length film, then spliced together clumsily into this Frankenstein's monster.<br /><br />At his best, the protagonist, Lucas, is creepy. As hard as it is to draw a bead on the secondary characters, they're far more sympathetic.<br /><br />Afraid of the Dark could have achieved mediocrity had it taken just one approach and seen it through -- and had it made Lucas simply psychotic and confused instead of ghoulish and off-putting. I wanted to see him packed off into an asylum so the rest of the characters could have a normal life.