Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Starring Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams

Directed by Andre Ovredal

The Story:
School outcasts Stella Nicholls (Zoe Colletti), Auggie (Gabriel Rush), and Chuck (Austin Zajur) are planning on celebrating one final Halloween night together by pranking local bully Tommy (Austin Abrams), resulting in Tommy and his friends chasing after them.  They hide at a drive-in in a car belonging to Ramon (Michael Garza), who's passing through the small Pennsylvania town in the late 60s.

After the treat leaves, Ramon talks to the teens and takes a shine to Stella, who invite him to go to the local haunted house - the house of the Bellows, who founded the town and had a secret daughter named Sarah who was kept in isolation and removed from all family photos, and whom local kids visited to hear her tell stories - to which after those kids mysteriously died.  Stella finds the secret book of stories Sarah wrote, and they leave the house.

That night Stella discovers a new story being written in the book, and learns that Sarah's spirit is out for vengeance by writing new stories about Stella and her friends, as they begin disappearing one-by-one.  Not being able to go to the police, Stella, Ramon, and the others have to find their own way to stop the stories before they all fall victim to Sarah's curse.

The Synopsis:
Growing up I remember reading the anthology series "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell, and they were truly terrifying for a young child such as myself.  Finally, the beloved childrens' horror series got the big screen treatment under the more-than-capable hands of director Andre Ovredal (who also supplied the whimsical, dark fairy tale film "Trollhunters") and producer Guillermo del Toro, who's best known for creating some of this generation's most iconic creatures in films like "Pan's Labyrinth" and "The Shape of Water."  The result is a mixed bag, but there's more positives than negatives - and manages to truly terrify audiences despite its limited PG-13 rating, something rare for a horror movie to do.

The film centers on four outsiders who come across a book written by Sarah Bellows, who was confined to a room and isolated from the world outside, who wrote scary stories and told them to children through her wall.  These children ended up dying, and people held Sarah responsible - so she hung herself, but that's just the beginning.  The book comes to life and Sarah's spirit writes new stories that star Stella and her friends, and they begin to come true.  While the film follows the traditional tropes that you find in pretty much every movie of this sect (misfit kids on a quest, charming 60s motif, small town setting, Halloween, a cursed object, a shady mystery, a haunted house, a visit to a library for information, etc.), it's the scary stories that really hit home the fear, as we eagerly tap our foot in anticipation for the next story to take place.

The film focuses on several stories from the classic anthology series.  "Harold" focuses on a scarecrow that comes to life.  "The Big Toe" centers on a living corpse who's searching for her missing toe that ends up in a stew.  "The Red Spot" tells the story of a girl's pimple that's harboring hundreds of spiders.  "The Pale Lady" haunts her victim in a red room.  "Me Tie Dough-ty Walker" consists of an evil named the Jangly Man that can re-assemble itself as it hunts its prey.

When these stories get told, they're downright terrifying, and you can clearly see del Toro's influence on many of the creatures.  The scarecrow is terribly bloated and moves with stiff rigidity.  The living corpse cracks and snaps with each step.  The Jangley MAn is actually played by a contortionist who contorts his body into the most wildly terrifying ways. Yet the most terrifying creature is the pale lady, whose smile will haunt your nightmares and overall appearance will make your skin crawl.  Unfortunately, there's also some CGI used in the film, especially during the spiders (I personally hate spiders and figured I'd be the most freaked out here, but I wasn't because the spiders looked really fake) that takes away from the sense of reality because it's clearly not a "real" creature.

In between the tales, Stella and her friends do the normal teenage sleuthing to uncover how to stop Sarah, and has a lot of similarities to other films like "The Ring," in which they even try to help Sarah in hopes of ending her vengeful ways.  The film would've fared better in my opinion if it truly was told in an anthology series (much like the other perfect Halloween film, "Trick R Treat") and not try to put all the stories together, but those weren't huge deterrents in the movie for me, as the truly scary moments were actually terrifying, and with the more family-friendly PG-13 rating will allow a younger audience to once again experience the dark magic that "Scary Stories" has to offer.

The Summary:
Bringing life to some of the most scary stories ever told to children, "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" really turns up the fright with its tales, but muddies itself when it tries to tie them all together.

The Score: A-