Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Dan Abel

Review by Dan Abel Patron

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 2019

★★★½ Liked

Watched 06 May 2020

In elementary school (Grade K-5) there were two series of books that I absolutely loved. Goosebumps, and the Scary Stories trilogy. Stephen Gammell's legendary illustrations were the perfect companion to Alan Schwartz's adaptations of folklore from various cultures and time periods. The Scary Stories trilogy were a big part of why I am the horror junkie that I am. When I heard they were making a movie I was excited but also apprehensive. Bringing those amazing stories to life is a tremendous task that could easily be done wrong.

It's Halloween 1968. Three nerdy teen friends, Stella, Auggie, and Chuck go out trick or treating. When the neighborhood bullies drive by and harass them they throw a flaming bag of dog shit in their car and run. They are chased to a drive-in theater where they hop in the car of an unsuspecting stranger named Ramon. They all quickly become friends and go to the town's haunted house. While inside the house Stella takes an old book. This was a big mistake. When she gets home she realizes that new stories are being written by an invisible presence in real time, and each one ends with someone who was in the haunted house dying. As they come true, Stella and her friends need to figure out how to stop it before they're all dead.

Anyone who read these books is in their thirties now so I wish they would have went full R rating with it instead of PG. However, I still enjoyed this film quite a bit. Sure there were some dumb things like two of the teens somehow being expert lock pickers and too many cheap jump scares. There's even something I LOATHE in here. Virtue signaling. The super obvious attempts to signal about race in this film are unnecessary and have nothing to do with the premise of the film. Even this wasn't enough to make me dislike the film overall. The special FX were great. Somehow they managed to capture Stephen Gammell's illustrations and bring them to life in impressive fashion. The wraparound plot for the stories is well done, the amount of material they crammed into the film is commendable, and the 1968 time period works extremely well.

I'm not holding it's rating against it. This film is a solid ★★★½ and surpassed my expectations. I'm looking forward to the sequel.

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