Movie Review: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Director: André Øvredal

Starring: Zoe Margaret Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 111 minutes

The stories we were in fear of growing up have now been set to moving pictures. The first book of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was published in 1981. Two more followed in the next ten years. As a kid, this was the book that friends carried in their backpacks and talked about in a hushed tone. Instead of trying to hide photos of provocative women, kids were coveting horror shorts written by Alvin Schwartz with grotesque illustrations by Stephen Gammell. So yet again, Hollywood has plucked my childhood for the big screen. Can this dry well produce any more wet buckets?

There are six screenwriters with Alvin, the original author, credited for the source material and Guillermo del Toro noted among them. That is simply too many irons in this fire, but here is what they came up with to connect the short stories. A young girl named Sarah Bellows is a member of the famous Bellows family that put the town of Mill Valley, Pennsylvania on the map with their mill. She was thrown into a basement room and started writing stories into a book. Then, in 1968, a group of teenagers stumble into the old basement and discover the volume of stories. This is one of two major problems I have with the film. The story of Sarah and the teenagers are just a delivery device for the short stories. It almost seems like no connective tissue would have been the better way to tell these stories, because the story they created was feeble and brought the film down.

The second issue I have is the choice of setting all of this in 1968. It probably needed to be placed in the past, but there were no measures taken to make it feel like 1968. All the characters talk and act like modern-day teenagers. Having classic cars from the era and old uptown storefronts is a good start, but that seemed to be all the effort put in. Other strange choices only existed to move the story forward, but I’m holding back telling you where this movie shines.

Every story the movie chooses to adapt is perfectly done. From The Big Toe to Harold, they are all handled masterfully. Seeing The Red Spot play out on the screen is pure, leaded nightmare fuel for some viewers. I was never disappointed by the adaptations, and they were always the bright spot in the otherwise useless story. At times they take some liberties to lengthen the stories, such as Me Tie Dough-Ty Walker, which wouldn’t have been a threat to the characters had they not extended the story.

Had they decided to go the Are You Afraid of the Dark? route and make each story a short connected by kids around a campfire, this movie would score higher. The Sarah Bellows narrative drags and is unnecessary in the face of the exceptional shorts. I highly recommend seeing the stories, but I wish I could see them in standalone short films and unconnected.

Click here for more movie reviews