Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Review

Happy Halloween everyone! Because, you know, it's never too early to start celebrating one of the best holidays, right? I say that because this weekend's slate of new arrivals is led by the adaptation of the popular 80's book "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," which is actually a trilogy of books written by Alvin Schwartz, with the three books published in 1981, 1984 and 1991 respectively. These are books that I didn't realize I was aware of until I saw the cover and was like, "Oh yeah. That." I didn't quite get into them like I did the "Goosebumps" books, but they're still familiar. Despite me not having quite the level of nostalgia for this books, I was still intrigued by this movie. It was an easy choice to see it over the other new wide releases. "Dora and the Lost City of Gold" is getting better reviews than I was expecting as I hear it's a cute and fun movie, but I still feel like the wrong demographic for that. "The Art of Racing in the Rain" is the third dog-narrated movie of the year and all of those trailers all year really started to annoy, so I'm passing on that. "The Kitchen" is getting pummeled by critics, and looked a little too similar to last year's "Widows," anyways, while "Brian Banks" looks like it would've been better as an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary. So "Scary Stories" it is!

When I introduced this review by wishing everyone a happy Halloween, that's because this immediately reminded me of the perfect Halloween party movie. Despite the series of books being marketing towards a younger crowd, and thus being a bit controversial because of that, this is not a kids movie. So don't take them. If you need a good Halloween movie for your older kids that pushes the boundaries a bit, put in "Goosebumps" or "The House with a Clock in Its Walls." Or play it safe with something like "ParaNorman." Those are solid PG horror films that would work well for older kids. "Scary Stories" is a PG-13 horror film that pushes the boundaries even for that rating. Like, seriously. When I first saw the trailer, forgetting who the target demographic is with the books, I was wondering if this was going to be rated R. It's not. Because there's no blood and language. But some scenes are about as equally as intense. Now I hate referring to this as a teen horror film because that implies that PG is for kids, PG-13 is for teens and R is for adults. And I hate those labels, except for maybe the R being for adults. So I don't want to say "Scary Stories" is only for teens. Rather this is perfect for anyone who doesn't want to deal with something as intense as "IT" or "Halloween."

As far as the plot goes, the original books didn't really have a through plot. They were a collection of short stories, with the first book having 29 stories, the second book having 28 stories and the third book having 25 stories. In addition to being a collection of short stories, they were also well-known for the creepy illustrations that stuck in people's minds. So what the movie does is that it finds a clever way to implement a handful of these stories, taken from all three books, not just the first, and creating a story out of them. How they do that is creating a character named Sarah Bellows who lived back in the 1800's and has returned in the form of a vengeful spirit, wreaking havoc on this small town in the 1960's. On Halloween night, a group of teenagers wander into the abandoned Bellows mansion and find Sarah's book where she wrote all her scary stories in. Our main female protagonist, named Stella, is obsessed with horror stories and becomes rather fascinated with this book until she quickly realizes that Sarah is writing more stories in it that are coming to pass right as they are being written. All the new stories are about each of the teenagers who were in the Bellows mansion that night, thus they are getting picked off one by one.

I was pleasantly surprised by how invested I was in this story. Sure, none of it is particularly unique. The idea of the characters from a book that are coming to life is the exact thing that the "Goosebumps" movie did. We've also seen vengeful spirits done countless times, as well as horror stories involving a group of kids or teens. But the execution of this was nearly flawless to me. Put front and center was this group of teens, the core of which was a trio of longtime friends consisting of Stella, Auggie and Chuck. Auggie and Chuck are the troublemakers in the group, but they also are very likable and have taken Stella, an often made fun of girl, under their wings. The three of them run into Ramon, who takes a special interest in Stella as a young love interest. And it's the four of them that go into the Bellows mansion while running away from school bully Tommy and his girlfriend, who is Chuck's ditsy older sister Ruth. It becomes therapeutic when Tommy is the first one targeted, but then it gets increasingly intense as the spirit goes after the other kids who we care about. The movie sets them up as great characters who are portrayed very well by the young actors. So that adds to the tension of the film when they start being targeted.

That leads me to the horror elements themselves. The movie does an excellent job of setting up the atmosphere around it. There's a lot of great, creepy set pieces in the movie, from the Bellows mansion, to the hospital, to the jail, all of which are accented by the dark and chill nature of the surroundings. Then the CGI of the monsters themselves do a great job of a capturing intensity of the illustrations they are based off of. Because of all of this, there were several sequences where I was curled up in my chair because it was so effective. But yet while the movie does push the boundaries of a PG-13 horror film, it never quite crosses the line, releasing the tension at just the right moment, leaving the audience with quite the rush, which is why I think this is a perfect party film. These scenes are well done, but they're never too much. It feels like it's done just right in order to satisfy the most broad audience. If adult-themed horror films are not your thing, you can feel comfortable watching "Scary Stories" because it'll give you a great rush without traumatizing you. At the same time, if you do like intense horror films, this movie will still give you a good enough rush to leave you satisfied. And you can also have a lot of fun in a group setting watching all your friends lose their minds.

This movie very easily could've been a jump scare fest focused on the loud noises and gory images. But I was really happy that it wasn't. Even though Guillermo del Torro, who was pushed heavily in the advertising, wasn't the director here, the movie felt like it had a lot of his influence with him being writer and producer. He's a filmmaker who knows how to effectively tell a horror story. It's all about the characters, the themes, and the atmosphere. I don't know who was the actual ring leader here, but I'm guessing it was del Torro because this feels like one of his films. The director is André Øvredal and my guess is that he set out to bring to life del Torro's vision with this. At the very least, though, you could tell that the two of them were on the same page and the result was an extremely effective horror film. I talked a lot about the main group of teens that elevated the film. Not only did they have great story arcs, especially Stella and her dad, the latter of whom was played great by "Breaking Bad" star Dean Norris, but I actually really liked the story behind our vengeful spirit Sarah Bellows. I won't say too much because spoilers, but when your horror villain has a good amount of depth and relatability, that helps quite a bit. 

This movie also feels like it was taken straight from the CW show "Supernatural." This fits so well into that world that I kept expecting Sam and Dean Winchester to pull up in their Impala to help these kids with their vengeful spirit problem. And that's another reason why I probably enjoyed this quite bit. As one who has watched all 14 seasons of "Supernatural," and is excited for the final 15th season, this felt like a classic "Supernatural" story with a great monster of the week, a solid lore and backstory, and some solid creature sequences. The group were trying to figure out how to stop this vengeful spirit and I kept feeling like yelling at the screen to tell that they needed to burn her bones because that's how the Winchesters would do it. Anyways, all that aside, I was well pleased with this movie. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect because a mid-August horror film can go either way, but it was a very pleasant surprise for me. Now I'm cheering for it to do well and become a sleeper hit so we can get more "Scary Stories." This feels like a horror franchise waiting to happen given that the original books have a total 82 scary stories and this movie just barely scratched the surface in portraying them. With my final grade, I'm going to go big and give "Scary Stories" a 9/10.