Scary Stories poster . Courtesy of IMDB
By Claire Convis
Staff Writer
Rating: B-
See it if: You like monsters, but don’t really want to be scared
Skip it if: You’re looking for a more hardcore Halloween film
Halloween is fast approaching and the chilling movies are creeping into town, including “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” directed by André Øvredal.
The film is set in the small Pennsylvania town of Mill Valley in 1969. It’s the night of Halloween (of course) and the residents of Mill Valley are either egging cars, trick-or-treating for Tootsie Rolls, or watching “Night of the Living Dead” flicker onto the drive-in movie screen.
In the film, a local radio station warns its listeners, “Be careful, ‘cause when the sun goes down, it’s the season of the witch!” Despite the radio host’s foreboding words, teenage friends Stella, Chuck, Auggie and Ramone pay a visit to the town’s haunted house after sundown.
The house used to belong to the Bellows, a once wealthy and proud family who ultimately imprisoned their daughter, Sarah, into a dungeon-like room because she looked “different.”
Kids flocked from all over Mill Valley hoping to get a peak at “Strange Sarah.” According to the legend, if a visitor asks Sarah to tell them a story from her book of scary stories (which are written in children’s blood) it’ll be the last one they’ll ever hear. Many of the kids who hurried to hear Sarah’s spooky stories never returned home, while others suspiciously died around town.
Stella’s bedroom is decked out in grim paraphernalia—from horror comic books to ghastly goblin figurines to werewolf posters; it’s no surprise that Stella is interested in Sarah Bellow’s creepy old book. She takes the book with her and soon discovers it will unleash the teenagers’ greatest fears.
“Scary Stories” shares similarities with “The Babadook” (2014), which features a sinister book that refuses to be burned, “Wish Upon” (2017), which chronicles a highschooler’s encounter with a creepy antique that provokes an angry demonic force, and “The Disappointments Room” (2016), which shows that locking young, troubled girls away in dark rooms usually doesn’t end well.
Overall, this was a fun Halloween movie to watch, but it was riddled with scary movie cliches and failed to deliver some solid scares. While some scenes and shots might quicken your breath, they mostly fail to raise goosebumps.
The trailer leaks too much, showing every monster and creature that appears on screen, thus giving away several jump scares. Even viewers who don’t normally watch chillers and thrillers are likely to emerge from the theater after “Scary Stories” and walk, not run in fear, to their cars.
Along with campfire ghost stories coming to life, characters deal with their own personal battles; Ramone faces racism and a draft into The Vietnam War, while Stella continues to blame herself for her mother leaving home years ago.
I expected more of a twist to the ending, but instead, the plot was tied up in a pretty classic way.
This not-so-freaky film was produced by Guillermo del Toro and based off of the spooky series written by Alvin Schwartz, and the ending alludes that a sequel may follow.
