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SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK

A FAITHFUL HOMAGE TO THE MOST TERRIFYING KIDS BOOKS EVER PUBLISHED



★★★★☆ (Worth the Watch)

Director: André Øvredal

2019


When I was growing up you could not get your hands on Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or its sequels in the elementary school library—the waiting list was a year long. Those gruesome tales about brides suffocating in cedar chests or people being ripped apart by a monster that wants their toe back were right up my alley, so I kept my name on the list and eventually succeeded. Years later, when I worked in the book business, I noticed that Alvin Schwartz’s trilogy was being published with lame new drawings that couldn’t scare a squirrel in a fireworks factory. I suspected the family values crowd, clutching their pearls and trying to ban these short story collections since the 80s, had scored a half victory, but the actual audience for Scary Stories (adults longing for their youth and kids with excellent taste) hated the updated versions. No offence to Schwartz, but it was never more clear the books do not hold up without the original, nightmare-inducing illustrations by Stephen Gammell. Gammell’s inky Rorschach tests from hell are to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as Bernard Herrmann’s score is to Psycho. One cannot exist on a pedestal without the other.


Halloween is not merely a selling point in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark movie, but a first act full of pivotal moments with repercussions for our heroes; and the chosen year of 1968 isn’t just so we don’t have to see cell phones—characters are affected by the date and the events going on at the time. If you think this is common sense for a horror movie, you haven’t been paying attention. Many dangle Halloween to lure you in only to give you a few decorations, and many rewind the clock because cell phones have ruined the helpless isolation once prized in horror (we novel writers are not immune), only to give us a few timely haircuts and tons of era-centric music. What I should have said is that the movie knows what it’s doing, and isn’t it sad that such small things seem like such a big deal?



Anyhow, the year is 1968 and the cornfield town of Mill Valley is celebrating Halloween along with our main characters. Stella is a horror geek who lives with her father and blames herself for her mother abandoning them. Auggie is her cowardly friend while loudmouth Chuck is the guy with reckless impulsivity. There’s Ramón, a secretive young man driving alone across the country, and finally we have Mill Valley’s Big Bully Tommy getting a tortured pleasure out of the pain and mayhem he causes. A trite trip to a local “haunted” house on Halloween can be forgiven because it leads to Stella finding a strange book which she quickly regrets taking home with her. As she and her friends are targeted by a curse, they must deal with ambivalent grown-ups and supernatural forces that seem impossible to beat.


All the characters in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark are fresh and likable, even the squealers. We’re carefully taken from one set piece to another without jarring cuts…until the end. This is when things fell apart for me a bit because the last location resorted to the cheap, crazed editing and janky CGI we see a lot on the big screen. So much is going on in front of you that you become numbed and feel as though you’re just watching things happen, and you’re not emotionally invested in anything. I’m willing to overlook this “last stand” because the rest of the movie is a delight, and it’s been awhile since something scared me as much as the anthropomorphic creature from “The Dream” slowly making their way down a hall toward one of our characters. We have never seen Stephen Gammell’s horrifying illustrations come to life before, and this makes the case that there’s so much more material for future films.


“…IT’S BEEN AWHILE SINCE SOMETHING SCARED ME AS MUCH AS THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC CREATURE FROM “THE DREAM” SLOWLY MAKING THEIR WAY DOWN A HALL TOWARD ONE OF OUR CHARACTERS.”


I have to bring up R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series in this review because the difference between the current screen adaptations of those vintage teen books and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is night and day. The three new Fear Street movies were a mess of ideas that felt nothing like the episodic killings and sometimes supernatural happenings in Stine’s novels. On the other side of the adaptation spectrum is Scary Stories, which acts and looks like it burst from the pages of Schwartz’s books. When you finally figure out what the movie is doing, it’s a fun ride with Easter eggs galore. Real thought was put into this project and you can tell talented creators cared about the material—Guillermo Del Toro and/or Øvredal kept tight control over the plot so that it didn’t go off the rails. I also appreciate that Scary Stories didn’t unnecessarily stretch their story into three movies for the extra cash. Though a sequel is in the works (I’m excited to see “High Beams” after Urban Legend‘s attempt), it’s an added bonus because this one film is satisfying enough to give you a Halloween candy hangover. It’s that good. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is not a perfect film but it’s a perfect film for readers who loved the books. Afterward, I wanted to pull out my copies and start reading, but it was getting dark in the woods behind my house and I had to say to myself, “Let’s wait until morning.”




GENRES: Diverse Characters, Feminist-Friendly, Monster/Creature, Teens in Peril


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