Movie Review: ‘Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark’

Review by Lauryn Angel

I didn’t read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark until I was an adult, but I knew many of the stories from friends, who told them at slumber parties and around campfires. When I finally read Alvin Schwa ’s compendiums of scary vignettes, I was too old to really find them frightening – although I found Stephen Gammell’s illustrations extremely creepy. When I heard that Guillermo del Toro was involved with a film version, my curiosity was piqued. There wasn’t really enough story to any of the tales to make a movie, but I had faith in del Toro and director Andre Ovredal, whose The Autopsy of Jane Doe I rather enjoyed.

From the very beginning, the film pays homage to the books, with the musical refrain from “The Hearse Song” and a voiceover that echoes the book’s introduction. The film’s frame narrative is set in a small Pennsylvania town in 1968 – the kind of town in which a stranger, such as Ramon (Michael Garza), is immediately noticed by the chief of police, Chief Turner (Gil Bellows), and warned to keep passing through. Unfortunately for Ramon, he becomes involved with three teenagers – Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti), Auggie (Gabriel Rush), and Chuck (Austin Zajur) – and their confrontation with the town bully, Tommy (Austin Abrams). Once Tommy is run off, the three teens take Ramon to visit a haunted house – and here’s where the fun begins.

The house in question belonged to the Bellows family – the family that brought prosperity to the town by opening a paper mill. But the family also brought tragedy to the town. Sarah Bellows, the family’s daughter was never seen, but local legend holds that the told the local children stories through the basement wall – but every child she told a story to soon died, and the townspeople accused Sarah of poisoning the children. When Stella finds Sarah’s book in the basement, she can’t resist taking it with her. She soon discovers new stories appearing in the book – stories about her friends that start to come true.

Sarah’s stories are where the books come in, as favorites like “Harold,” “The Big Toe” and “The Pale Lady” appear to help characters meet their doom. Whereas many of the stories in the books end benignly, or in some cases, vaguely sinisterly, the characters in the film don’t get off so easy. Gone is the sense of “good spooky fun,” replaced with a much more menacing mood.
While there are some jump scares here, the film doesn’t rely on them, instead relying on a creepy aesthetic and genuinely creepy characters. And while it’s not kids’ stuff, it fully earns that PG-13 rating. It’s a great movie for the whole family – or just for teens for a last summer night at the movies before school begins in the fall.