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"   Photo: Getty Images  The LA Film Festival came to a close with last night&amp;#039;s premiere of Don&amp;#039;t Be Afraid of the Dark. Guillermo Del Toro, the man behind the Oscar nominated Pan&amp;#039;s Labyrinth, directed the horror film. It stars Katie Holmes and Bailee Madison (who looks as much like Holmes as Suri). Most of the ten-day film festival revolved around esteemed artists, indie film gods and the stars littering downtown Los Angeles in support of films and friends, but the fun came to a dark end with the festival&amp;#039;s closing night film. When introducing Dark to audience, del Toro said that he wears Dark`s R rating as a &amp;quot;great honor&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;that it&amp;#039;s like giving [him] an award for sexiness.&amp;quot; So we sat down with the director to find out what makes him tick and how he got Holmes on board. ELLE: Was there a particular moment that you expected the audience to respond to so physically?GT: There was one moment that I changed. It was the moment when Sally is searching under the sheet for the creature. Before the change, the creature was on top of the bed, which was too similar to Pan&amp;#039;s Labyrinth. ELLE: The girl next to me screamed at that moment. How did you get Katie on board?GT: She loved the character. She felt it was very rich to play Kim. The character was a woman that didn&amp;#039;t want to be a mother and by the end of the story, became a mother. The real story for me was a family movie. It&amp;#039;s also interesting that in a horror movie the weakest character will be that of the man. The idea is that the &amp;quot;child&amp;quot; in the movie is the father. The two women are very connected.   The poster for Don&amp;#039;t Be Afraid of the Dark.  ELLE: You&amp;#039;ve called this film a throwback to classic horror movies without gore or torture...but the first five minutes of the film? GT: The Shining is a perfect example of that genre. The others are less well known. I remember watching The Birds. It was the jealousy of the character that released the birds. In the same way, the jealousy of the girl is what releases the creatures. [But the gore] that&amp;#039;s different. There is no graphic moment. You just hear it, which I think is worse. It mostly depends on atmosphere and dread. The scariest part is between things happening. ELLE: Where did you come up with this idea? GT: My co-writer Matthew Robbins and I invented everything, but it&amp;#039;s inspired by a Welsh writer of horror stories who believed fairies were scary creatures. I like monsters. I was a very strange child. I was never attracted to beautiful things. ELLE: Does that explain why Sally is intrigued by the creatures and not afraid of them? GT: That character is me as a kid. ELLE: That&amp;#039;s interesting that you put yourself in female form. GT: I also do it in male form. Like in The Devil&amp;#039;s Backbone. It&amp;#039;s all boys\u2014they are all me. In Dark, I&amp;#039;m a little bit Katie. I&amp;#039;m a little bit the father. I can be as selfish and silly as the father. Don&amp;#039;t Be Afraid of The Dark hits theaters in August. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/news/a6772/guillermo-del-toro-on-katie-holmes-horror-film-24358/>