The Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books, like R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps and J.B. Stamper’s Tales For The Midnight Hour series, have amassed a cult following among children of the 80s whose first experiences with horror came within their pages.
However, rather than Alvin Schwartz’s fine writing, it was the book’s illustrations by Stephen Gammell that haunted a generation of budding genre fans. And it is these images that serve as the visual inspiration for the long-awaited movie adaptation.
So could this modern take on classic childhood terrors bring a little darkness to today’s audiences? Or would it be a tall tale too far?
Read on....
SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (2019)
DIR: André Øvredal
STARS: Zoe Margaret Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows
SPEEDY SYNOPSIS: I’ll try not to spoil too much but continue at your own risk.
Set in 1968, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is the story of a quartet of teens - bookish budding author Stella (Colletti), mysterious outsider Ramone (Garza), uptight and squeamish Augie (Rush) and crude comic relief Chuck (Zajur) who discover a cursed book as they attempt to escape the attention of jock bully Tommy (Abrams) and his goons on Halloween night.
Penned by local legend Sarah Bellow, the book - consisting of a number of short spine-chilling tales - was said to be written in the blood of the children she murdered.
After removing the book from a suitably creepy haunted house, our protagonists are shocked when new stories start to appear within its pages... featuring several familiar characters.
THE BEST BITS (mild spoiler warning): A clever little puzzle box of a film, the clever set-up of this story allows writers Dan and Kevin Hageman to implement a number of stories from the anthology-style source material in ways that specifically reference each character’s own fears and hang-ups.
Taken from American folklore and in some cases urban legends, these stories provide the necessary jolts, while the narrative structure stops the movie from simply feeling like a collection of short films.
Trollhunter and The Autopsy Of Jane Doe helmer Øvredal is becoming something of a force within the genre and his team ensure that the flick boasts expert pacing, tonnes of atmosphere, and some genuine scares along the way.
The teen cast are strong, with each putting in a believable and endearing performance. Colletti makes for a fine female lead, while Garza and Rush both display fine comic timing.
The leads are ably backed up by a strong supporting cast who do plenty with a less integral characters. Abram’s swaggering bully and Ganzhorn’s pretty but self-conscious high schooler stand out in a cast with little in the way of weak links. Elsewhere familiar faces Norris and Bellows also add gravitas to proceedings - with Bellows in particular seeming to have lots of fun with his role as a cynical town sheriff.
However, the real stars of the film are the fantastically creepy monsters, brought to life by fantastic effects work and top physical performers such as Javier Botet and Troy James. The Toeless Corpse, the Pale Lady, Harold the scarecrow, the Jangly Man... each feels as if sprang straight from Gammell’s haunting illustrations and is more than capable of carrying a horror movie on their own. That we get so many top-drawer boogeymen in the 1hr 47min runtime is spoiling us!
At the heart of so many of the movie’s heart-stopping set pieces - from the inexorable pursuit through the ‘red room’s’ corridors to the stalking sequence in the moonlit cornfield - Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark doesn’t shirk when it comes to the first word of its title - and that’s before we even get to the brutally disturbing body horror of classic urban legend ‘The Red Spot’...
THE WORST BITS (mild spoiler warning): Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is a strong and atmospheric genre flick - yet the film is not without its flaws.
A familiarity with the cult source material (which is definitely less well known this side of the Atlantic) is definitely a bonus as some sequences may seem odd or confusing without knowledge of the stories. The dog scene lifted straight from Me Tie Dough-ty Walker is great for us fans but borders on goofy if you don’t understand the significance of the creature’s strange growls and whimpers.
And while the sheer number of suitably spooky antagonists is a strength, it also serves as a weakness as they have very little depth beyond ‘scary creature chasing character X’ if you don’t know the story (or stories in the case of the Jangly Man) from which they came.
Also the movie’s historical setting seems rather arbitrary, contributing little to the plot other than a more relaxed attitude to racism among some of the more unsavoury characters, a rather shoe-horned and poorly explored Vietnam draft subplot, and some political digs toward Nixon and the current U.S. government.
It feels like there really was a bigger message behind choosing this era as the setting for Sarah Bellow’s revenge - sadly it seems that it may have got lost in translation along the way.
THE VERDICT: Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is good old-fashioned spooky fun - an ideal gateway flick for teens who want to get into horror, much like the original book served way back in 1981.
Fans of Shwartz’s hit trilogy of books will be delighted, while I suspect this eerily atmospheric and legitimately frightening big screen introduction will introduce a whole new generation to the chills within their pages.
Proving a hit at the American box office, a second chapter appears inevitable at this stage - and I will be first in line for More Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.
Until next time, I hope you enjoyed your stay.
No comments:
Post a Comment