Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a perfect reflection of the beloved book series it is based on. As the title suggests, it’s filled with scares that will leave younger audiences sleeping with the light on at night. But for adults, it’s a fun nostalgia trip with a few good scares and imaginative monsters.
Set in 1968, a group of teenagers on Halloween night sneak into an abandoned old house with a haunting past. After discovering a book of scary stories, they soon come to realize that the horrible tales in its pages are more than just campfire stories.
The opening of the film, while standard for teenage horror movies, has such a wonderful charm, its impossible to hate. The characters are fun and the atmosphere is just the right amount of chilling to keep the excitement going. Once when the creatures do show up, they all have such unique designs both faithful to the book but also with a touch of Guillermo del Toro’s style that it’s impossible not to be at least creeped out by them. Although most of the creatures are revealed in the trailer, the cinematography will leave you unsettled.
However, as the plot progresses, the unsettling nature that was so perfectly set up in the beginning starts to dwindle. It’s still able to pick the scare factor back up occasionally with its jump scares but the charm diminishes. Not to mention, as with most horror movies targeting a younger audience, many loose threads are tied up nicely in a bow. It’s a little too nicely for adult audiences but those who are just peaking their interest in the horror genre will find it to be a safe starting ground.
If you’ve never read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, watching this film will instead take you back to when you first saw Are You Afraid of the Dark? or Goosebumps. It’s scary but a safe scary. And there’s nothing wrong with that for the audience this film is meant to reach out to. It’s a fun film.
Guillermo del Toro and André Øvredal are the dream team when it comes to bringing these stories to life. While the plot can be clunky at times, the atmosphere is impossible to ignore. It may not be a film you’ll want to necessarily see in theaters, this is definitely a great movie to watch late at night in the dark with younger kids who are just dying to get scared. And, for those of us who just want to relive our childhoods, this film will tap into our primal fears and remind us what it felt like when we were scared for the very first time.
