Released: August 9, 2019
Director: Andre Ovredal
Screenplay: Dan & Kevin Hageman (story by Guillermo del Toro, Patrick Melton, & Marcus Dunstan)
Tagline: "Based on the iconic book series"
Cast:
Zoe Margaret Colletti as Stella Nichols
Michael Garza as Ramon Morales
Austin Zajur as Chuck Steinberg
Gabriel Rush as August "Auggie" Hilderbrandt
Natalie Ganzhorn as Ruth Steinberg
Austin Abrams as Tommy Milner
Kathleen Pollard as Sarah Bellows
On Halloween night, 1968, in the small, quiet town of Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, horror junkie and social outcast Stella Nichols and her friends invoke the spirit of the holiday by pranking back the school bullies, trick-or-treating, and showing the new guy in town their creepy local legend: the abandoned, supposedly haunted house of the Bellows family, a dilapidated mansion shrouded in rumors of child-murdering, insane daughters, and black magic. Naturally, they find themselves trapped in the basement, where the story claims one Sarah Bellows was imprisoned by her own family for being different, and where she wrote scary stories, whispering them through the walls to anyone who would hear them. Stella finds the legendary book of scary stories, but when she takes it home, a darkness is unleashed upon her and her friends, and the only way to stop it is to find out the whole story.
The frame narrative is Scary Stories' weakest element, by far. An uninspired, contrived set-up meant to churn out the monsters one right after the other. But isn't that what we're all paying for, anyway? We know why we're here, and the movie does too, so I'm not going to take points off for the filmmakers giving us exactly what we wanted from this adaptation. In fact, I applaud that they didn't go the anthology route, which I imagine was tempting. I think it would have left the viewer disjointed whereas here we become invested in the characters. And the monsters and creature effects, of course.
While our main crew slips easily into teenage stock types, there are moments where each performer shines through. Casting relative unknowns and actual teen actors was a benefit here, especially since the film is targeted at a young adult audience and is very much structured as a gateway film for the genre. That being said, Ovredal isn't afraid to drop some serious scares in here, but as most of us would agree, that's the tried and true way to hook new blood. The frights are well-earned, and the combo practical/CGI effects are impressive, rendering Gammell's iconic drawings to a T. The Jangly Man and the spider scene are highlights, an effective combination of psychological terror and twitchy, gross-out body horror.
Ovredal excels with tone, both in scares and general atmosphere. Mill Valley is quickly established as a Derry/Castle Rock-type Appalachian village faced with looming change as the cloud of the draft hangs thick, the Vietnam War kicks into high gear, and Nixon bumbles his way into the presidency. Environmental exploration shots and a chilly score--Lana Del Ray's witchy, weird cover of Donovan's "Season of the Witch," in particular--will make your flesh goosebump at an imagined autumn breeze as you swear you could taste cinnamon in the air. And could there be more perfect conditions under which to hear a scary story? Well, aside from in the dark, of course.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
5 - Totally Terrifying
4 - Crazy Creepy
3 - Fairly Frightening
2 - Slightly Scary
1 - Hardly Horror
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