Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a 2019 horror-thriller about four friends who accidentally unleash a dark, vengeful, force with the power to create their greatest fears on their small Pennsylvania town.
It’s 1968 on Halloween in Mill Valley, Pennsylvania when Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark opens. Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) a classic-horror loving teen (and aspiring horror writer) joins her dorky best friends Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur) for one last Halloween hurrah…and to take a stand against their classmate, Tommy (Austin Abrams) . The violent and cruel letter-jacket wearing football player and his loyal gang of equally hateful goons make the night hell for everyone and Stella and her pals are done with his bull.
Their spectacularly hilarious and totally disgusting prank is a hit and the trio manages to evade Tommy’s wrath by glomming onto a teen migrant worker named Ramón (Michael Garza) who’s just passing through town. Stella, Chuck, and Auggie quickly strike up a friendship with Ramón and, high on the spirit of Halloween invite Ramón to join them in a Mill Valley rite of passage – exploring the abandoned mansion of the Bellows family: the wealthy founders of the town whose dark past and untimely demise still cast a shadow over the town. After all, the whispers go that their daughter Sarah, was mad. Confined to the basement Sarah was only able to interact with the outside world by talking through the thin walls to the thrill-seekers who frequently clustered on the grounds outside her cellar prison. The rumors went that she was a practitioner of the dark arts. That the tales she told led to the demise of dozens of children and townsfolk before she decided to hang herself with her own hair.
The horror junkies that they are, the four teens gleefully roam around the decaying mansion. It’s when Stella stumbles upon a secret room and unearths Sarah Bellow’s leather-bound book of stories– tales rumored to be written in Sarah’s own blood — that Sarah’s restless, and revenge seeking spirit is awakened. Stella done messed up. Big. Time.
Based off of the novels of the same name written by the American folklorist Alvin Schwartz, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark grabs a fistful of short stories from the Schwartz’s three volume anthology (which includes a total of over eighty stories) and manages to braid them together into a single narrative while also honoring them individually.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark writer Guillermo Del Toro knows horror. The indomitable creative force behind Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Crimson Peak is one of the most talented directors and screenwriters in horror today. His affinity for infusing waking nightmares and the peculiar into his gritty, edge-of-reality film worlds is unmistakable. Racist cops, anti-war protestors, and the shared pain between Stella and her father Roy (Dean Norris) ground the movie in reality. Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is set in 1968, and it’s flavored with that decade in the best ways possible. Unlike the recent Conjuring Universe films La Llorona and Annabelle Comes Home the Flower Power decade, and all its anti-war counterculture, is such a part of the movie that it’s quite nearly a character itself.
Del Toro is joined by André Øvredal. The Norwegian filmmaker best known for best known for directing the 2010 campy mockumentary Trollhunter helms Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and does so with style and substance.
The greatest style? How the designs of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’s creatures– the Pale Lady, the Jangly Man, Harold the scarecrow, and the rest of the beasties– are taken directly from the pages of Schwartz’s anthology. Specifically, Stephen Gammell’s grotesque and iconic charcoal-ink art. (Just google Sam’s New Pet and Spider bite!) The monsters are made from a combination of actors in costume and CGI, that doesn’t completely smother their “human” elements. Instead, it takes them to a disturbing new level. Take the contortionist Troy James whose responsible for the disjointed, spiderish, and twisty body movements for the decomposing corpse who torments Ramon. It’s disgusting and well, awe inspiring.
Another one of the most impressive sequences in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is the pale lady from “The Dream”, who coyly closes in on an increasingly frantic Chuck. The screaming red walls, and the slow, purposeful gait of the paunchy doughy-faced inhuman woman are unsettling and unnerving, namely because of the contrast between Chuck’s hyper-manic energy and her own contained glee as she approaches. The same can be said for Harold, the battered, scarecrow with a weathered, scarred face, and massive hole where his straw belly should be. As he preys on his victim, much of his approach is off-screen – we heard the rustling in the corn stalks, the snaps and crackling and when he finally does strike, it’s like downing a shot of hard liquor or being sucker-punched in the gut.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a remarkably effective horror film.It runs a tight 110 minutes, shuns gratuitous CGI and exposition. Squeamish viewers be forewarned, there’s a hell of a lot of body horror scenes and a questionable pot of leftovers that may have you rethinking heating up that leftover stew for dinner….
When Stella inevitable squares off against the spectral Sarah Bellows the encounter is one that strays from the lazy cliches that frequently dominate recent horror films. There’s much to be said about the refreshingly positive depiction of women especially in this film, but to keep things spoiler free, that’s a discussion saved for another time. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is enough to satisfy seasoned horror fans, old school horror nostalgia seekers, and younger horror-seekers, dipping their (hopefully still attached to their bodies) toes into the genre for the first time.