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Article by Nathan Hurlbut
“You don’t read the book, the book reads you,” Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) informs her decreasing number of friends with a deeply foreboding tone in the movie Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. They’re decreasing in number because they’ve been mysteriously disappearing once the evil spirit of an assumed child murderer named Sarah Bellows has started claiming them for her own in the underworld..
Based on the young adult books by the same name that were released back in the 1980’s, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a movie adaptation of those beloved books that gave many a kid nightmares back in the day. For the most part, the movie version succeeds in recreating the appeal of those popular books while providing some original twists as well.
The film’s screenwriters, Dan and Kevin Hageman, cleverly rework the anthology format of the original books to create a wrap around story here that ties the whole movie together. The movie’s central trio of friends, Stella, Chuck (Austin Zajur), and Auggie (Gabriel Rush) discover a cursed tome in a haunted house that writes its own stories that forces our protagonists to helplessly watch as these nightmares come to life around them. This imaginative format gives the movie more of an episodic structure that remains cohesive as Stella desperately searches for a way to stop the evil spirit of Sarah Bellows from continuing to create new stories and claim future victims.
Yet, as anthology movies generally go, some stories are stronger than others, and this film is no exception. The story of a menacing figure that comes looking for its missing toe will be familiar to anyone who has spent time at summer camp and gathered around the campfire to tell a scary story. As is the tale of a seemingly harmless bump on Ruth’s (Natalie Ganzhorn) face growing to an alarming size only to release a collection of terrifying creatures. It’s a story that entered the realm of urban legend long ago, having made previous appearances in, for example, 1990’s occult movie The Believers.
Memories of another movie, 2007’s Zodiac, also makes an appearance here when the strains of a Donovan song Season of the Witch are heard kicking off the proceedings, setting the time period of 1968 with effective, if familiar, results. It’s typical of the movie’s hit or miss atmosphere, relying as much on previously known material as much as its own ideas.
However, when the movie does kick into more original material, it transforms from a quaint collection of spooky chills into a full-blown living nightmare. The story of Chuck’s (Austin Zajur) dreams becoming premonitions of his demise are convincingly depicted here as he scrambles down mental hospital hallways drenched in vivid, blood red lighting. The unique creature(s) that pursue him are directly drawn from source material artist Stephen Gammell’s undeniably creepy images that gave the original books such a twisted, vaguely forbidden aura.
Meanwhile the frightening creation that pursues Ramon (Michael Garza) makes its entrance as merely a severed head before reassembling itself into a truly terrifying creature. It’s here that director Andre Ovredal makes his biggest impression, having previously directed the entertaining found-footage monster movie Trollhunter (2010). He provides this particular monster with a slow burn of dread, stretching out the tension to the breaking point until it erupts into a full-scale horror show. It’s typical of his full command of creating a menacing atmosphere here, a skill that relies more on an anxious mood and occasional jump scares than in-your-face horror or even any amount of bloodletting.
In fact, to call Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark a horror movie would be a bit of a misnomer. It’s a scary movie, to be sure, but as its PG-13 rating suggests, the film is concerned more with dredging up adolescent fears than the full-blown terrors of the adult world. For that reason, the movie is a unique experience- a throwback to a bygone era that is deliberately nostalgic and rewarding to anyone with a desire to have the wits scared out of them. Meaning, of course, any thrill seekers who found the original Scary Story books to be such an enjoyably terrifying read.
Rated PG-13.