‘Tooth Fairy’ DVD Review

Stars: Claire-Maria Fox, Claudine-Helene Aumord, Manny Jai Montana, Clayton Frake, Elena Thomas, Mike Kelson, Suzy O’Sullivan, Lucia Edwards, Shawn C. Phillips, Nicola Lean, Will Dodd | Written by Tom Critch, Shannon Holiday | Directed by Louisa Warren

Now, listen… I’m very forgiving when it comes to horror as a genre of film. I’m open-minded, especially when it comes to the low-budget end of things, and while I’ve seen some unforgivable dross over the years, I’ve also been witness to some low-budget diamonds that managed to make something extremely entertaining with a very small, or even… at times, non-existent budget. Tooth Fairy (previously called Toof), is a low-budget horror film that introduces us to the legend of an evil tooth fairy whom rips out teeth. A simple concept, and one that could, on paper, lead to something pretty fun. So, how does this fair?

Written by Tom Critch and Shannon Holiday and directed by Louisa Warren (Curse of the Scarecrow), the film takes place on a farm as we witness a family get-together. The daughter, Carla, played by Claire-Maria Fox, has some issues with her mother, Jen’s, stories about the Tooth Fairy. These crazy and far-fetched yarns are more than just that, however, when we find out that that bloody nasty tooth-snatching lassie is hiding in the shed. Oh dear. What follows is a fight for survival when the grizzly Tooth Fairy gets loose and begins to hunt for her chompy-bitey dinner.

It’s pretty damn basic stuff and feels a lot like other low-budget monster movies I’ve seen through the years, in both set-up and execution. It’s one of those films that you watch and wonder, from quite early on, if you might have seen it before, even though you know you haven’t. The performances from the actors is fine, with none of them being especially offensively bad, but nobody particularly stood out to me either. I felt like the story, the performances and the overall atmosphere of the film just existed for a while, offering little more than a vaguely-passable horror that will find itself in the bottom of horror bargain bins for sure.

Now, people put a lot of work and heart into these things, and that deserves some respect, so I don’t particularly like being too negative about things if there are positives to be found, and there are a few to be found here. There is plenty of character development going on here, which can be rare in low-budget horror, and it presents a backstory about the family we are following. Not all of this development is interesting or even necessarily needed, but it’s there and I applaud that. The titular Tooth Fairy design is well done, and the way the character shifts into the form of other characters was done well too. It’s better, in some ways, than I expected, when it came to these elements, and there were a couple of occasions where the film made me chuckle, and not because I was laughing AT the film, which again… is worth a mention.

This isn’t anything to write home about and some people won’t have the patience for it. It’s quite slow, and at under 90 minutes it really shouldn’t be, but if you’re hardcore into low-budget horror then you might find that it’s worth digging through the boring, the lacklustre and the disappointing parts of Tooth Fairy to get to the bits that aren’t too bad. There are way better options out there, but there are worse ones too.

** 2/5

Tooth Fairy is out now on DVD.