Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a new movie based on a series of kids horror anthologies from the 90s. I’d see those books in passing at the book store but thought nothing of them… until I found out they were seminal scary books for millennials. All it took was a dozen references by Buzzfeed writers and listicles to make me realize I’d missed out on some pop culture. So now there’s a nostalgia bomb movie out that had one good trailer that had me curious.
I was genuinely kind of surprised but uniquely disappointed by this movie. It’s a very atmospheric and well shot film… it basically lands a pretty creepy vibe and generally looks impressive. The creature effects – sometimes practical FX suits – were usually very good and impressively creepy. The actors are doing a good job as well.
But all that fine work is ultimately betrayed by a weird dissonance. The movie is setup to have a frame story of a bunch of teenagers finding a book that writes their future deaths. Each story is taken from the Scary Stories books… which are just 2-3 page urban legends like the Hook Man, the zit full of spiders, etc. The problem is that each story that is inserted into the overall frame story is too short and sometimes awkwardly crammed in. It’s as though they didn’t have the courage – or material – to just make a series of short films so they wrote a kind of boring main story to justify the shorts. It’s never quite as cohesive as it should have been.
But as a movie to freak out over while chewing on popcorn, maybe it does enough. Because there are moments of real creepiness here and some monsters that are genuinely unsettling. The movie really (REALLY) pushes the PG-13 rating. If you have me creeped out and uncomfortable at the appearance of the spooks in this flick, then they’ve certainly done something right.
Also… random aside about the frame story. The film is set in 1968 and has a real fascination with the Vietnam War and Nixon’s election (and casual racism – one of the main characters is Mexican-American). I’m not sure why the fixation on the late 60s in a movie based on a book written in the 90s but it’s there. I can only maybe guess the idea that there are real horrors mixed in with the supernatural horrors? I guess.
Anyhow, this is an imperfect movie but what it does right as far as a pulpy spook show movie is sometimes remarkably good. Even if the overall story doesn’t work super well, it’s still waaay better than disposable generic horror movie crap like The Bye-Bye Man or The Curse of La Llarona. If you have nostalgia for the property or just want a pretty good spook fest, this is still a pretty good effort.
Score: 79