I’m Not Scared | Review

Adaptation of Niccolò Ammaniti’s novel is a low-brow suspense that depicts how a child’s playground becomes tainted by the morally corrupt.

Italian film director Gabriele Salvatores’ eerie number depicts how children eventually become victims of the adult world in this beautifully photographed film grippingly told through the POV of a skinny-framed Italian boy. While the notion of braveness and discovery are emphatically transmitted throughout the film the major turn-off is the film’s bizarre denouement that succumbs to what one traditionally sees in tragic mainstream thriller fares from Hollywood where a narrative set-up exploits the cause rather than exploring it.

I’m not Scared begins innocently enough as a tale about a young adventurous ten-year boy played by big-eyed Giuseppe Cristiano who with his neighborhood gang appreciate the joys of summer in peasant country. This piece of Tuscan Italy is nestled so far off the map that the town’s people buy their commodities off trucks, a place where the only manner in which to beat the heat is to strip down to your underwear and if your are a ten year old boy you bike around a lot and take naps in the golden burnt-sun fields of grass. With no public swimming pools or empty soccer fields nearby, one defunct house of a hill becomes the center of buzzing activity; it looks like a sort of battered pirate ship where the young protagonist Michele walks the plank in a dare-you-do-do-this-or-I’ll-call-you-a-chicken type of game. In a sort of mix between Stand by Me and The Sixth Sense, the film’s narrative is a hardly conventional blend of a coming-of-age story and a mangled, ghostly kidnapping plot where adults start to act weird.

Cinematographer Italo Petriccione’s supplies the film with lush romanticized visuals that remind of recent Walter Salles films, but by design there is nothing remotely dreamy about the series of effective framed shots from the infamous hole. While the not-so-secretive questions as to why there are the adults in town are acting so strange and as to what they are possibly hiding are irritating and distracting it is the relationship that Michele has with his new play friend that either proves that naivety is a regional condition or that there is really not much of a story for an entire film to begin with. While one can appreciate the boy’s transition from a carefree childhood to a complicated grown-up world it is the chilling suspense combined with the blind courage of the protagonist that are the high points of the narrative. The creepiness is served up with several day shots showing Michele opening up the lid and the reverse subjective POV shots evokes the nightmarish possibilities. The film certainly hooks the viewer early on; unfortunately, the interesting notion of uncovering and discovering gets a second act jolt of sensationalism with an overall premise that turns into a blasphemous mess.

I’m not sure as to why Miramax made a point about picking up I’m not Scared which comes across like a film that plucks itself until it has no feathers to fly with and where the final act of the film is just as alluring as a day at the beach when the water is cold and the wind is blowing sand in your face.

Rating 2.5 stars