CBS Films
Growing up I never read ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’. I always saw the books at my school library in elementary. I constantly read ‘Goosebumps’ instead but ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ is something I have always been interested in. The new adaptation of the set of short stories brings the most popular creatures like Harold the Scarecrow, the Jangly Man, and the Pale Lady to the big screen. With this movie being set on Halloween and dealing with horror elements, this film should have been released in October, a much better time for people to enjoy the film.
One Halloween night in the 1960s, a group of teenagers enter the Bellows family mansion, a mansion in their small town of Mill Valley that has haunted many visitors throughout the years. There is a myth that the young daughter, Sarah Bellows, killed herself after being tortured by her family for being different and turned her secrets into stories. Horror-obsessed Stella (Zoe Colleti) finds the book written by Sarah Bellows and of course takes it home. While exploring the book one night, stories start to write themselves. Each story that is being written by Sarah Bellows involves her friends with their fears as the center of the stories.
I enjoy movies that take place on Halloween night. Halloween is my favorite holiday and I love everything about it. Movies like Halloween and Trick ‘r Treat, which take place on Halloween night, get me excited for the holiday. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark started on Halloween night, which made me excited for the Halloween season, even though it’s only August. The atmosphere created in the film provides an eerie vibe centered around monsters and people’s fears. A lot of effort went into crafting the monsters and making them look creepy. The designs, which are spot on to the ones in the books, look disturbing. I found the simplicity of some of the monsters to be the most disturbing. The overall production that went into the sets, locations, and monsters is what I found the most impressive about the movie.
The stories that are being written in the movie are based on the group of teenagers’ fears and myths they heard as a kid. Some are short, just like in the book, and some take up a large portion of the film. While I thought the designs for the monsters were creepy, most of them felt undeveloped. I never felt that the teenagers feared the monsters, despite them being based on their own fears. One of the most disturbing ones was the Pale Lady, who was a woman with long black hair and had a haunting smile. She slowly walked down a hospital corridor that was flashing red lights towards one of the teenagers. All he did was try to find a new place to run but ended up being caught by her. The film never makes the audience understand why the teenagers are afraid of the monsters in the film. If the movie cut out one or two of the stories and then provided reasons why the teenagers were afraid, the monsters would have felt more effective in the film.
With so many short stories involved in the film, it takes away from the overall story based around Sarah Bellows. The film tried to provide her character with a backstory and a reason why we should fear Sarah Bellows, but it never worked. When the film reached its climatic moment with Sarah, I didn’t care what happened because I never understood her character and her motivations to scare children. If the movie got rid of a few stories, Sarah would have had a chance to have a stronger story.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is an interesting concept that is handled poorly but the atmosphere and monsters is what keeps the film fun. It is a flawed film, but it is one that I wouldn’t mind watching every October to get excited for the holiday. After watching this movie, I am now afraid of scarecrows.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark has a run time of 1 hour 51 minutes and is rated PG-13 for terror/violence, disturbing images, thematic elements, language including racial epithets, and brief sexual references.
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