Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark - Good When it's Scary Stories

If The Haunting Hour is one step scarier than Goosebumps, then the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books are two...or maybe three. Mostly due to the chilling illustrations by Stephen Gammell. This suggests it would be the perfect scary movie. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

The film, released in 2019, follows, as is a current trend in horror, a group of teenagers. They find a book in a haunted house that starts writing its own scary stories, which just happen to be happening as they're reading them.

And like Stranger Things/It (2017), Scary Stories tries to set itself apart by placing itself in the 60s. This is actually its strong suit, the aesthetics of 60s small town America builds a great sense of place, and conveniently solves the mobile phone dilemma. It also gives Ramon (Michael Garza), our love interest, a draft dodger story line. Whilst compelling, and providing a few much needed emotional beats, this does swing out of left-field a bit. There's half a metaphor, half a message in there, but it doesn't quite come to fruition.

The main characters aren't particularly likeable, but they're not particularly offensive, either. Their jokes rarely hit, but they do no harm and, when separated, do just as well being hapless victims. Because there's not a lot to them, it doesn't really matter when they die.

Because all of the monsters are actually great. They've clearly taken inspiration from the source material whilst translating them to screen in a way that shows Del Toro's had a hand in it. The scenes that are meant to be scary are the ones that work the best, by deliberate use of camera, lighting and sound design. For the most part, they capture the creeping dread of the original books and understand what's most important; planting a creepy idea. A big toe in the soup, or a pimple full of spiders keeps you thinking about it for days after and is a key element of good horror.

And, because it's Guillermo Del Toro, of course most of the effects are practical. That gets it double the points in my book, as you do believe that pale lady is in that corridor.

These are the most memorable portions, and they're portions that should go on longer. Its so rare to get a scarecrow in horror, and they're so underutilised, that the Harold scene felt very fast. It feels as though they were trying to cram as many of the iconic stories in at once.

Which they would have the time to do, if there wasn't such a waste of time with the overall narrative. This is the weakest point: Sarah Bellows (Kathleen Pollard)'the witch.' It's nothing that wasn't done with Paranorman, and Paranorman did it with more interesting visuals and characters. There's nothing there we haven't seen before. It feels forced to create a narrative, and Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) just isn't interesting enough by herself to carry it. So she's weird, she's a weirdo - so? Isn't everyone? This is where the inoffensiveness - the safeness - of the characters gets annoying, because if their parts were cut, we could spend longer on the scary stories we were promised. Either have the kids all sitting down to read the creepy book, or make it an anthology movie along the lines of Creepshow or Cat's Eye. It's the overall plot line that makes it feel like a more intense The Haunting Hour. (And not by much!) The ending doesn't help - it's reluctance to wholly commit to character deaths make it strange, confusing and baiting for a sequel. (When a sequel could be done with different, stand alone characters.)

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark has some wonderful visuals and good monsters. It's the plot that makes it blend into the crowd, making it seem like another hopper on the It bandwagon. Worth watching the clips of the best bits, but it's fine to skip the rest.