The year is 1968. Halloween is taking place. The presidential election with Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey is just around the corner. News from the war in Vietnam is in every TV and radio station in the country. While it may seem like a mere backdrop for Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, the era informs so much about what the film is doing. Of the name doesn’t ring a bell, Scary Stories is a new horror film loosely adapted from the series of iconic and controversial books from Alvin Schwartz, which was popular among many young readers.
I say loosely adapted because unlike taking an anthology route, since that would seem like an obvious choice with the material, the filmmakers decided to take a different approach. The film is directed by André Øvredal (of Trollhunter and The Autopsy Of Jane Doe fame (do check those out if you haven’t already), who is working off a screenplay by Dan and Kevin Hageman. However, Øvredal isn’t the only horror maestro involved, as Guillermo del Toro is a producer on the film, as well as sharing a story credit alongside Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan.
The story follows a group of young outcasts in the small town of Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, mostly through the eyes of Stella (Zoe Colletti), the kind of loner girl who writes horror stories in her room while her walls are plastered with posters of Bela Lugosi movies, and her desks full of horror magazines. She and her friends, Auggie (Gabriel Rush), Chuck (Austin Zajur), and newly befriended out-of-towner, Ramón (Michael Garza), enter a house that is the subject of local folk legend, and inside they find book that belongs to one of its tortured residents. Unfortunately, in the book, the stories are written out, and immediately come to life targeting the kids one by one.
While I haven’t read the books, the unsettling illustrations by Stephen Gammell were hard to miss, and with del Toro’s involvement, it’s no surprise that the monsters that show up in the film really shines, mostly because of the effort to stay true to the surreal illustrations. They’re appropriately sickly, horrific, and gnarly, and Øvredal revels in their appearances, milking it for all its worth while never taking away their impact. And utilizing a mix of makeup, practical effects and computer generated imagery gives them a genuinely distinct presence among many modern movie monsters.
It should be noted that the film is still one aimed at a fairly young audience, not quite for children, but generally for young adults. I didn’t find it particularly scary, but it does well in providing a solid atmosphere and tense sequences despite the PG-13 limitations. However, this shouldn’t be confused with being just like any other modern PG-13, studio horror film. It’s a hokey film, the kind that will have lines like “You don’t read the stories, the stories read you” with incredible earnestness, and it’s here where some might not enjoy the moments in between the horror setpieces.
For me, I was very much endeared by its deeply classical, hokey folk tale quality. The film captures the Halloween spirit effortlessly, as well as the feeling of being in a small town where residents will put together outlandish stories to entertain one another. It commits to this style of campfire tall tales without a hint of irony, and that sincerity is what makes the film as effective as it is. It also has some of the heavy handed theming you’d see in a lot of these old stories. The film isn’t just taking place in 1968, it essentially comments on that era, and how the horrors of real life inform the horror stories we tell one another. There’s a very direct, if a bit sloppy, connection to the idea of young men being drafted into the war with the book, in how it’s a paper where a name (which the film established is written in the blood of children) will appear, essentially dooming that person to a guaranteed death. It’s not much, but it shows the film has more on its mind, and it’s perfectly suited to the younger audience that this is aimed at.
There’s even a solid emotional thread with Stella, whose mother has left her and her father, Roy (Dean Norris), and she has largely blamed herself for it. We don’t spend a lot of time with this, but it continues the film’s exploration of how people internalize trauma and use that pain to inform stories. Colleti gets one moment, a phone call between her and Norris, and it’s a wonderful scene of two people opening themselves up after holding in so much pain for so long, and despite minimal setup, it’s a beautifully executed scene. The rest of the cast is solid, but aside from maybe Garza, who has to deal with the kind of bigotry that is unfortunately still very relevant, they don’t have a lot to do aside from what is necessary for the plot.
I’m not sure how a fan of the source material would react to the choices made in this adaptation of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, but I was very satisfied in ways I didn’t expect. While its younger skewing sensibilities might not make the film as scary as you would want in a collaboration between André Øvredal and Guillermo del Toro, it delivers on all the elements that make their work so distinct and fun and smart. Its homespun horror vibe absolutely worked for me, and I was charmed and endeared by the cast and the earnestly old fashioned take on this kind of material. It pushes what you would expect from a horror film aimed at a younger audience, bringing thrills and chills that are clearly coming from people who love the genre, and for older audiences who might not be as terrified will still be engaged on an intellectual and emotional level, assuming they are able to jive with the film’s particular wavelength like I did.