While playing outside with friends near an abandoned house, nine year old Michele (Giuseppe Christiano) discovers a strange hole in the ground, hidden beneath metal and straw. Inside the hole lies what at first appears to be a monster or ghost, but soon enough the whispering, slumped form beneath the torn blanket reveals itself to be another child, Filippo. To reveal much more of the story would rob the film of its precious pacing, such a large ingredient of its success. You can likely intuit why a child might be shackled and hidden in the ground faster than a young boy, and part of the joy of Salvatores' film is watching the Michele uncover some very adult secrets.
Unlike most thrillers, I'm Not Scared never rushes the story, taking its time to let the reality of the situation really sink in for its juvenile characters. Michele reacts at first like most children - he tries to ignore the strange discovery of the manacled boy, preferring to go about his routine in carefree, child-like manner. But he's haunted by the possibility that someone means to hurt this little boy, with whom he can't help but relate. He may not be stuck in a hole in the ground, but Michele feels similarly isolated and alone. From his father, he simply gets macho challenges, opportunities to prove his manhood, and from his mother only consternation and impatience.
As we see Michele eventually force the issue of Filippo with the adults, and eventually take on responsibility for the boys welfare himself, Salvatores continues to compound the complications. Though the film opens as a horror movie - what could be buried in that strange hole? where does this child come from? - deftly segues into a domestic drama. Michele finds out more about the adults surrounding him than any nine year old would care to know, and he learns that part of growing up is accepting responsibility for things, even if they're not your fault. It becomes less a question of what can be done and more a question of what needs to be done.
I've spent all this time talking about the film's content, possibly because I find it so fascinating. I've always enjoyed films that get naturalistic performances from young actors, that explore some of the painful contradictions of aging in an honest way, rather than through mugging or precocious shenanigans of some form or another. Like Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone, I'm Not Scared takes an almost pessimistic approach to adolescence. For these directors, it's a time of lost innocence, when the weight of the world first begins to bear down on the young, naive and unaware.
But there is much more to admire about I'm Not Scared than its performances or choice of theme. The movie is a technical marvel, a showcase for all manner of visual creativity. An early scene introduces us to the entire town through one marvelous, swooping tracking shot. We glide through endless wheat fields watching the children at play, gaining a feeling of near-weightlessness to reflect Michele's carefree days before finding Filippo and learning some harsh truths. And an early scene, where Michele first discovers the secrets of the dark hiding spot, earns a genuine scare, not because it's a jump cut with a loud musical cue, but because it's a genuinely unnatural image presented directly.
The only other film I've seen by Salvatores is the medicore Meditteraneo, a nice-enough WWII fantasy without nearly the depth or mastery of genre demonstrated in I'm Not Scared. This is a remarkably assured, mature work, a terrifically entertaining and perfectly realized suspense thriller worthy of mention alongside The Devil's Backbone and other, similarly successful efforts.
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