User Reviews

The tale that started it all... Two brothers, who I'm sure anyone could totally buy as brothers, the older one being a bit of a bully who constantly hurls hilarious insults at his younger brother, a thoroughly irritating perky little brat with a horrible nasally-sounding voice and who's acting is so dang poor it could've threatened the burgeoning future of the show if it wasn't so funny, are hiking in some woods and find themselves lost. They soon encounter a strange middle-aged laughing man in the dark named Flin who rather cryptically guides them to the shady shack dwelling of a scarily eccentric and slightly sinister giant of a man named Dr Vink who blackmails them into engaging in tricky riddle word games, and after he gives them one that's a little too hard to solve quickly and takes the craziness up a notch by demanding they give him a hand(!), the boys give the first ever iconic screaming into the camera shot of the series, and flee back into the woods where they again encounter Flin who says he's there to give them a ride home, and while doing so and yakking away at them, he spins his head all the way around and reveals that he's been dead for forty years and is cursed to repeat the accident that killed him every night along with whoever happens to be in his cab until someone can solve the wicked doctor's nefarious riddle.. It's pretty bizarre! I just seriously wanna slap that little idiot silly when he decides to repeat the entire riddle again instead of just saying the answer immediately as the cab is about to crash into the tree! The head-spinning is the one good scare that every episode had somewhere and it's a real laugh out loud moment as well and is kind of what made the show so great! There's loads of great cheesy exaggerated 90s lines flying left and right! Being the first episode it's shaky and they hadn't quite got the balance of the cheese factor right just yet, as far as this one goes it's pretty much off the scale! I poke fun but that tends to be a part of how you love this show. Watching it now it really takes me back a little to when I was a kid watching this for the first time and loving it, there's a lot of nostalgia attached to it for me. It's like watching a tiny piece of my childhood and a reminder of more innocent happy times. It's a show that wasn't really about acting or even how scary it was, it was all about the fun, the stereotypes and over the top acting and situations always had a playful feeling and a sense of adventure, and you can even see here why the show was such a long-lasting hit with kids and deservedly went on for seven wonderful seasons. So this inaugural take isn't all that great but it was a good way to begin the series and I submit to you, fellow fans, Are You Afraid of the Dark... He kinda died!

The Crocker brothers, Denny & Buzz. get lost in the woods. They get sent to a cottage by a mysterious man by the name of Flynn. He vanishes and an eccentric doctor Dr. Vink resides in the cottage. They come across a phantom Cab Driver that promises to kill them in a crash if they can't solve the riddle. The Crocker's must solve the riddle before it is too late. I loved this show as a kid. I'm sure it is still a great show, but it's off to an inauspicious start. It wasn't that this episode was horrible, just underwhelming. It keeps your attention throughout for the most part, but doesn't do anything overly exciting with the plot. The acting is absolutely horrendous and amateurish like you wouldn't believe. It doesn't help that Buzz (The older brother) is completely asinine and abrasive towards his younger brother. I did like the clever reference to Friday The 13th (A maniac killer in a hockey mask that will slash us) It especially drags when we get to Dr. Vanik's part. The ending is somewhat clever, but it was a little too late. I didn't mind it, but it was rather sluggish and disappointing.

Additional Note: Rachel Blanchard appears a storyteller around the campfire. She would do 26 episodes

5.6/10