Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Rating: 3.75/5

With monsters better than the content in between, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a well made horror movie that doesn't fail to entertain.

In the year 1968, Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) and her friends are going trick-or-treating to celebrate Halloween. When a prank goes wrong, the group finds themselves having to hide out a haunted house that used to belong to the Bellows family. Legend has it that if a child goes in asking for Sarah Bellows to tell them a story, they die.

Thinking it is just Halloween fun, Stella takes Sarah's storybook from the house, hoping to be able to explore it more at home. When Stella begins to look through the book, she is horrified to see a story beginning to write itself in blood red ink. The next day, a boy has gone missing. It doesn't take Stella long to realize the connection between the two mysterious events, and soon she and her friends are on a race against time and terror to stop Sarah Bellows from claiming more victims.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a perfectly adequate horror movie that I really wish had existed when I was growing up. It faces a tricky balance at entertaining a wide range of audiences, given the books in which it is based off. The books themselves most certainly pushed the boundaries for what could be considered too scary for a young reader, and the film tries to push those limits as well and mostly succeeds. It is definitely too frightening to be considered a children's movie, but isn't too silly to be found irritating by an older audience. Given the fact that Guillermo del Toro wrote the screenplay, it couldn't have been easy for him to tone down his typical way of storytelling, so for that reason it did seem like the movie struggled at times to stick to its PG-13 rating.

Easily the best part of Scary Stories were the creatures and ghouls that appeared periodically throughout the film. The dialogue and plot points in between each monster appearance was fairly mediocre, but that mediocrity was completely saved by how creepy each scary story scenario was. Most notably would for me would be "the Pale Lady". There's something effortlessly eerie about the slow moving villain. When the killer or monster doesn't feel the need to run to catch its victim, it appears to have more power than the sprinting and chasing antagonists do. The slow and relentless killers know they are going to get their prey and don't feel the need to hurry. The scene in which "the Pale Lady" is the story in focus, is not only the most frightening part for the movie, but is visually the best as well. The contrast between the intense bright light and the paleness of the hospital walls makes for a impressive movie moment.

Performance and character wise, Scary Stories left something to be desired in most of the cast except for the main character, Stella. Her friends were all fairly static characters and fell into your basic horror movie character tropes; the smart sensitive guy, the immature dim witted friend, and the mysterious newcomer. Stella on the other hand, being the protagonist, had to go through many changes throughout the film and Zoe Margaret Colletti was definitely up for the task. There were many times where I felt her performance was actually better than some of the material she was given, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if we see bigger things from her in the future.

Overall, I really did enjoy Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark despite its occasional flaws. I do feel that its release was a bit premature given the topic of the movie and the fact that its mostly centered around Halloween. However, if you consider the fact that It: Chapter Two is about to drop into theaters very soon, it makes perfect sense that Scary Stories didn't want to compete with such a highly anticipated release.