by Adam Albright-Hanna

For his follow-up to his darkly brilliant tour de force, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, director Michael Lembeck chose to attempt to bring to the screen a truly tough and meaty piece of work: The Tooth Fairy, a dark spiral into the abyss of barren fantasies doomed to extinction. In Lambeck’s frenetic, visionary, unique, and devastating style lies the perfect setting for this story of a violently disturbed minor league hockey player whose chilling nickname, “The Tooth Fairy”, comes from his habit of removing opposing player’s teeth through jarring, soul crushing violence.

The story takes us to the stark, icy landscape of the hockey rink, a place where cold, violence, and masochism intertwine in twisted fantasies of fame, power and fear.

With his unflinching dissection of addiction to violence, Dwayne Johnson begins the tale as a man with everything to lose. When a young child expresses his intention to emulate Johnson when he grows up, Johnson is clearly horrified that anyone would want to live his sordid nightmare life. He replies, simply, “lower your expectations, kid.”

Shattered by the knowledge that his decisions he’s made have somehow convinced this child to be like him, Johnson experiences a break in reality and delves into an unending spiral of delusion and paranoia.