Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Review
PG-13: Terror/violence, disturbing images, thematic elements, language, including racial epithets, and brief sexual references
Studios: Lionsgate, CBS Films, Entertainment One, 1212 Entertainment, Double Dare You Productions, Sean Daniel Company
Director: André Øvredal | Screenwriters: Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman
Cast: Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Lorraine Toussaint
Release Date: August 9, 2019
It's 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind... but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where, for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time -- stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah's terrifying tome.
A new horror has arrived in town and you know it’s something of quality when you have the man of monsters himself, Guillermo del Toro, attached to it. The beloved Mexican filmmaker has a love for projects relating to horror, fantasy, and family, often blending them together to great effect. One of the best examples of his blending of genres is the Tales of Arcadia series for Netflix, which is a trilogy aimed at families that differentiates in tone -- ranging from light comedy to dark and dramatic -- but is still appealing to all nonetheless. With 3Below being the latest project he’s worked on, del Toro is back with the film adaptation of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, based on the anthology horror novels by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell. It’s directed by another horror alum, André Øvredal, and written by the Hageman Brothers, who wrote episodes of del Toro’s Trollhunters.
Set in a Pennsylvanian town in 1968 -- because apparently all of the great horror stories are set in the late 20th century (i.e It: Chapter One) -- a group of teenagers comprised of a writer obsessed with horror with the mannerisms of a young Velma named Stella, a pessimistic nerd named Auggie, a quick-witted nerd named Chuck, and a misunderstood yet well-meaning rebel named Ramón, stumble upon an old book in a haunted house on Halloween night. Once the book is opened, the kids are cursed as they become victims of a set of short and scary stories, all written by a 19th century witch as the books write the stories on their own and her stories come into fruition. Now they must find a way to prevent the stories from coming true as they themselves become the victims.
Maybe my excitement for this flew way too close to the sun, for this is one of the major releases of the month that I was looking forward to. Unfortunately, the end product is middle-of-the-road.
One of the major intentions del Toro had for this movie was for it to serve as an introduction into the world of horror for younger audiences. This was meant to be for audiences that felt as if they were too mature for Goosebumps but not quite ready for IT due to its gory content and disturbing imagery. Scary Stories is a decent passageway for teens and it does that quite well by exhibiting bloodless horror sequences that are effectively terrifying. Yet, for horror veterans or people who are aware of the source material, the story is way too formulaic in structure and convoluted by plot, taking pages out of the book of better horror features aimed at families.
You have a set of teenagers portrayed by a relatively decent cast playing their respective roles: the leader, the nerd, the comic relief, and the diversity cast for the White kids to be racist towards (because, you know… the ‘60s, the racism. It’s present and RELEVANT, JUST LIKE TODAY!)
Quick sidenote: if you think I’m kidding about how contrived the relevant American undertones are, which serve no purpose to the story outside of being RELEVANT, the camera often drifts to footage of Richard Nixon running for office.
Anyway. Back to the cast. While the only cast member whose performance makes a decent impression is Zoe Margaret Colletti, for she’s the lead and one of the only characters with dimension, exhibiting somber pain that you empathize with, the characters aren’t established well enough to root for. The film starts off strong by playing Donovan’s “Season of the Witch” as it introduces the set of characters the story follows, yet it doesn’t spend much time developing the closeness between the main trio: Stella, Auggie, and Chuck. Outside of them being nerdy outcasts in a small town, you never get the sense of them being close friends, especially to serve Stella’s character arc which is dependent on their friendship. Because of that, you’re never really engaged with any of the other main characters, not feeling any sort of empathy when terror strikes upon them. Outside of Stella and Ramon, everyone else is pretty one-note and one-dimensional, lacking any justification for the audience to care about them, making parts of Stella’s character arc muddled.
While this doesn’t take the cheap route by slapping a series of anthologies into one feature due to its source, the end product is not effective as it tries to formulate a single-arc narrative that oftentimes rips pages out of much more notable family-friendly horror movies. The set up bears resemblance to the Sony-franchised Goosebumps movies by having kids open up a book with scary stories featuring terrifying creatures coming to life. But as it progresses, it becomes something conventional as it has characters getting axed one by one until there’s a sole survivor, like in every horror movie ever. It doesn’t do anything inventive or new by story standards, for its only splice of life occurs whenever the scary stories and spooky creatures come into fruition.
Øvredal pays respect to author Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell’s illustrations as the creatures are brilliantly translated to the big screen with terrifying effects (some more effective than others). Whenever a Scary Story is written, the fun really kicks into high gear. The sequences are well choreographed and they benefit from the dark cinematography and framework that plays around the target character’s fear, with shots putting you in their headspace, allowing the horror be pulse-pounding, and the creature’s signature ability that makes them as scary as they are. Unfortunately, those sequences are sparse, but they’re appreciated whenever they occur.
Speaking of fun, the film also benefits from a light and playful tone while maintaining dark atmospheric elements and themes, just like its source material. There are moments where you are intentionally laughing because of the film’s light humor, but then there are moments where you’re laughing at an actor’s poor performance. There is an antagonistic character named Tommy that bullies our protagonists but never once comes across as intimidating. Seriously, he’s an evil jock but is built like a scrawny dude whose choice weapon is a bat. Not even a bat with spikes, just a wooden bat. But what makes him so laughable is how he speaks his lines, for he has the dialect of a sadist but is so monotonous and delivers dead-eyed looks that you can’t help but laugh at unintentionally.
As the film progresses, the plot starts to feel tired. Despite the array of creatures presented, the story gets too repetitive for its own good that it also becomes a bit disjointed, not delivering the dramatic points at the appropriate moments, disrupting the tone. Maybe anthologies would’ve worked best for this, for that’s a narrative format most popular in horror that barely gets to see the light of day. This would’ve been a perfect story to do that with, especially to distinguish itself from other horror films of this nature. I say the story feels very similar to Goosebumps, but what this reminded me of most was Paranorman. From its light tone mixed with its dark atmosphere to the simplistic set of characters and some of the messages it conveys, it bears the same beats by the finale, but done much weaker in comparison. I respect it for being PG-13, but there are PG-rated horror family films that are far more effective than this.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark stays faithful to its source material with its sequences of horror, but its flaws lie within the conventionally formulaic story that fails to make a valuable impression. But hey, since this is an August release, this would be the perfect rental to get when it comes out on digital during Halloween.
Rating: 2.5/5 | 53%
