{"id":7701,"date":"2019-08-08T17:30:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T21:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7701"},"modified":"2019-08-14T21:57:41","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T01:57:41","slug":"review-scary-stories-to-tell-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7701","title":{"rendered":"Review: SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An exercise in middle-school horror best suited for the small screen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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It would be easy to call \u201cScary Stories to Tell in the Dark\u201d a bridge for younger viewers to get into the horror genre. I get it, this film is rated PG-13, and sits in the no-man\u2019s land between \u201cGoosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween\u201d and the recent \u201cAnnabelle\u201d sequel. But despite its best efforts, \u201cScary Stories\u201d isn\u2019t scary enough to capture audience attention in the already crowded marketplace.

When aspiring writer Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) and her high school friends visit a decaying, creepy mansion on Halloween, they discover a hidden chamber. It\u2019s the place where, many years ago, the Bellows family imprisoned Sarah, a mysterious child, who harbors a dark secret. While exploring Sarah\u2019s dusty chamber, Stella finds an old, leather-bound manuscript that is rumored to contain some infamously scary stories. But within the book resides a demonic force that threatens the lives of anyone who comes into contact with it.

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Zoe Margaret Colletti as Stella examining the scary book.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Without having read the source material written by Alvin Schwartz, I can\u2019t comment on how this adaptation compares to the popular compilations of middle-school horror stories that inspired it. I\u2019ve seen some of the illustrations by Stephen Gammell that accompanied the text, and the film matches up with them well. It\u2019s the narrative that is sporadic and lacks a cohesive spark. Even without consulting the books, viewers will be familiar with the genre beats: unleashed from the pages of Sarah\u2019s anthology emerge a number of ghouls that terrorize and kill kids in gruesome ways.

A couple of these monsters are effective. In one scene that takes place in a mental institution, a creepy, woman-like being slowly follows the hapless Chuck (Austin Zajur), systemically boxing him in. Later on, a monster, made up of severed body-parts, runs amuck, but it\u2019s more amusing than frightening.

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The production design of the film matches the source illustrations.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScary Stories\u201d starts well establishing the late 1960s setting. Given the retro success of \u201cStranger Things\u201d and \u201cIt,\u201d there\u2019s a clear effort here to jump on the band wagon. Therefore, once again, a tight band of teens unite to combat a supernatural menace. And by using this nerdy group, the attempt is to pull together various scary stories. But here, the mythology at play isn\u2019t very interesting. The perfunctory investigation they engage in feels rushed and conveniently pushes the plot forward. The kids never put together a coherent plan of attack in order to fight back. The random, scattershot approach is frustrating.

But there is a place for a bridge horror film that introduces the genre to younger viewers. However, these days our youngest audience members are cinematically mature beyond their years. The goofy charm that helped transcend a film like \u201cThe House with a Clock in Its Walls,\u201d doesn\u2019t transfer to \u201cScary Stories.\u201d Where \u201cClock\u201d caught everyone up in the adventure as its heroes took on evil, \u201cScary Stories\u201d merely acquaints us with the bad guys, only cursorily getting to the solution. When it ends, it hints at a sequel where the real adventure awaits.

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Stella and Ram\u00f3n (Michael Garza) discover a hidden chamber.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s that ending that makes a strong case for serialization on television or one of the streaming platforms. Because the source is three volumes of stories, the very title containing this concept, why wouldn\u2019t it have made more sense to launch this as a series? Maybe this is where it\u2019s headed, because I suspect that a theatrical sequel is unlikely.

\u201cScary Stories to Tell in the Dark\u201d is produced by Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro and directed by Andr\u00e9 \u00d8vredal, who gave us the wonderful \u201cTrollhunter\u201d back in 2010. And the quality of the production can\u2019t be questioned. It looks great.

Incomplete without a sequel and lacking in the magic that made \u201cStranger Things\u201d such a success, \u201cScary Stories\u201d feels very much like a well-made copy-cat searching for an audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PG-13 horror film feels both familiar and out of place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1679,1683,1681,144,105,1682,1670,1680,1678],"class_list":["post-7701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-alvin-schwartz","tag-andre-ovredal","tag-autin-zajur","tag-guillermo-del-toro","tag-horror","tag-michael-garza","tag-scary-stories-to-tell-in-the-dark","tag-stephen-gammell","tag-zoe-margaret-colletti","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7701"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7717,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7701\/revisions\/7717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}