SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (2019)

Studio:      CBS Films
Director:    Andre Ovredal
Writer:      Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman
Producer:  Guillermo del Toro, Sean Daniel, Jason F. Brown, J. Miles Dale, Elizabeth Grave
Stars:     Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Zajur, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Austin Abrams, Natalie Ganzhorn, Lorraine Toussaint

Review Score:

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Summary:

In 1968, four teenage friends discover a cursed book whose supernatural stories come to life to haunt their small hometown.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

1968 – Mill Valley, Pennsylvania – Accompanied by aspiring writer Stella Nicholls, teenagers Chuck Steinberg and Auggie Hilderbrandt prank school bully Tommy Milner and his cronies on Halloween night. Tommy chases the trio to a drive-in movie theater where Stella, Chuck, and Auggie hide in a car belonging to Ramon Morales, an out-of-towner who is secretly dodging the draft. Stella and Ramon take an interest in one another.

When he finds the three friends, Tommy insults Stella by suggesting her mother left her father Roy because of Stella. He also demeans Ramon before the manager forces Tommy to leave.

Stella, Chuck, Auggie, and Ramon decide to spend the rest of the night investigating the abandoned and reportedly haunted Bellows Family mansion. After breaking in and exploring the house, Stella recounts the legend of Sarah Bellows. Sarah’s family was among Mill Valley’s first settlers, and they made their fortune via a paper mill. Sarah was a supposedly insane writer who was kept locked away in a hidden room as well as erased from all family portraits. Sarah was said to have poisoned local children before hanging herself with her own hair in 1898. Legend has it you could come to the house and ask Sarah to tell you a story through the wall of her room, but it would be the last story you ever heard.

While hiding in a closet to scare Auggie, Chuck briefly sees the surrounding room inexplicably revert to 1898. Chuck sees an old woman, Sarah Bellows’ mother, with a Doberman before blinking back to reality.

Stella and Ramon find the secret room where Sarah was imprisoned. Stella recovers the storybook in which Sarah supposedly wrote terror tales using the blood of children.

Tommy locks Stella, Ramon, Chuck, and Auggie in Sarah’s room with Chuck’s sister Ruth. However, the door supernaturally unlocks after Stella asks Sarah’s ghost to tell her a story.

Once outside, Ramon discovers that Tommy vandalized his car. Stella offers to let Ramon sleep in her basement for the night.

When he learns about her writing, Ramon recommends that Stella move to the city to become a successful author. Stella insists that she cannot leave her emotionally troubled father alone.

Alone in her bedroom, Stella sees a story called “Harold” being supernaturally written about Tommy in blood in Sarah’s book. At the same time, a scarecrow named Harold comes alive on Tommy’s family farm and kills the boy by turning him into a scarecrow.

Police Chief Turner harasses Ramon at the mechanic the next day. Chief Turner mentions Tommy’s disappearance and insinuates that Ramon could be a suspect since he is an outsider.

Stella shows Chuck and Auggie the new story that appeared in Sarah’s book. Chuck reveals what he saw while in the Bellows mansion closet. Auggie dismisses their claims as a ghost story.

Stella tells Ramon that she believes the new story and Tommy’s disappearance are connected. Stella and Ramon investigate Tommy’s farm and discover Tommy took Harold’s place as the scarecrow. However, Ramon doesn’t believe Stella’s suspicion.

Stella returns the book to the Bellows house. Inexplicably, the book shows up in Stella’s bedroom when she returns home.

Ramon realizes the book’s curse is real when he and Stella see a story called “The Big Toe” being written about Auggie. Stella radios Auggie with a frantic warning to not eat anything. Auggie still eats a pot of stew found in his fridge and nearly swallows a toe along with other body parts. A corpse shambles toward Auggie demanding the return of her toe. Auggie hides under a bed, but the corpse pulls Auggie into the darkness and he disappears. When they arrive, Stella and Ramon find only fingernail scratches in the floor.

Stella blames herself for inciting Sarah’s curse. She and Ramon meet with Chuck and Ruth to explain what happened to Auggie. Ruth leaves in disbelief. The remaining three friends try burning Sarah’s book, but it is unaffected by fire.

Stella, Ramon, and Chuck research Sarah Bellows in the newspaper archives. They learn that one of the family’s caretakers and her daughter, Louise ‘Lou Lou’ Baptiste, were believed to be involved in voodoo. They also learn everyone in Sarah’s family mysteriously vanished within one year of Sarah’s death. Stella double checks the book and sees that Sarah’s family members were victims in other stories.

A story called “The Red Spot” starts writing with Ruth as the central character. Stella, Ramon, and Chuck race to the school where Ruth pops a massive spider bite pimple that releases hundreds of spiders. Stella sees Sarah’s shadow orchestrating the event before Ruth is carted away in an ambulance and committed to an asylum.

Stella, Ramon, and Chuck visit Lou Lou. Lou Lou denies that her mother taught black magic to Sarah and instead suggests that Stella made Sarah angry by taking the book.

Stella, Ramon, and Chuck sneak into New Pennhurst Hospital to examine Sarah’s medical history. Fearful of a ‘red room’ because of a terrifying dream he had, Chuck enters a separate wing while Stella and Ramon research Sarah’s records.

Records reveal that Sarah’s brother Ephraim was her supervising doctor. Through a wax cylinder audio recording, Stella and Ramon discover Sarah’s family conspired to have her tortured with shock treatment because she found out the family’s paper mill poisoned the town’s children through mercury in the water. The Bellows made Sarah their scapegoat and imprisoned her in the house as punishment.

The book begins writing a story titled “The Dream.” At the same time, a Pale Lady shambles toward Chuck in another hallway before absorbing him into her stomach through an embrace.

Stella and Ramon are arrested following the hospital break-in and Chuck’s disappearance. Fearful that the book will target her next, Stella tearfully calls her father Roy with a cryptic warning that she may vanish. While consoling Stella, Roy explains that it wasn’t her fault that her mother left them.

Refusing to entertain their claims about the book, Chief Turner outs Ramon as a draft dodger and locks him in a cell with Stella. The power goes out in the police station as the book begins writing “Me Tie Dough-ty Walker” with Ramon as the central character.

Starting with a decapitated head, body parts fall into the station through its chimney. The body parts assemble into The Jangly Man, who kills Chief Turner.

Stella and Ramon escape the station with the book. Stella goes back to the Bellows mansion while The Jangly Man pursues Ramon.

At the Bellows house, Stella screams that she knows Sarah is innocent and begs Sarah to stop telling stories. Stella inexplicably becomes Sarah Bellows as she is transported to 1898 inside a story titled “The Haunted House.” Lou Lou momentarily helps Stella hide, but Stella is ultimately captured and imprisoned by the Bellows Family.

Still pursued by The Jangly Man, Ramon enters the house in 1968. Deducing what happened to Stella from her dropped book and eyeglasses, Ramon shouts across time for Stella to tell Sarah the truth.

Stella confronts Sarah’s ghost in the hidden room. Stella explains that she understands Sarah was a victim who was unfairly turned into a monster. Stella vows to tell people Sarah’s true story, but Sarah must stop her rage first. Sarah gives Stella her pen. Stella uses her blood as ink to begin writing Sarah’s story. Sarah screams and vanishes. The Jangly Man also disappears. Stella and Ramon reunite.

In the aftermath, Stella wins a writing contest with her story about Sarah’s tragic history. Ramon joins the army. Stella promises to write to Ramon every day. Accompanied by her father and Ruth, who was released from the asylum, Stella goes on the road in search of a way to bring Chuck and Auggie back.

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Review:

I think it’s fair to say that the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” books occupy the next logical point of progression for parents and/or young readers anxious to graduate from the relative good humor of R.L. Stine’s “Goosebumps” to YA terror tales with more serious substance. Author Alvin Schwartz’s fear-filled folktale collections retain a streak of strange silliness where a monster might mutter nonsense like, “Me Tie Dough-ty Walker!” Yet when the comedic capers of a cursed ventriloquist dummy no longer inspire odd imaginations, “Scary Stories” offers the macabre maturity of heftier horror with gruesome fates and higher stakes.

It’s also fair to say that the movie inspired by Schwartz’s three books thus bridges the gap between the comparatively safer PG thrills of the “Goosebumps” movies and R-rated scares that remain out of reach. By virtue of its teenage heroes, small town setting, and urban legend eeriness, “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” still stokes a fire for frights with some junior high appeal. But it is not as fully family-friendly as its Jack Black-starring peers, making for a darker horror movie that might be exactly what one wants from a PG-13 middle ground.

Two paragraphs through and I’ve already used “Goosebumps” as a measuring stick twice. Those won’t be the last two times either. “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” makes it difficult to put the other books/movies out of mind. Particularly since “Scary Stories” and “Goosebumps” (review here) both form their foundations from an identical setup of a haunted storybook coming to life.

“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” takes place in late 1968, although the retro time period is mostly only used to make one person a draft dodger. Richard Nixon repeatedly pops up in cutaway clips and characters make idle remarks about ‘Tricky Dick.’ I admit I gave it no more than a minute of thought, but I’m not sure what the backdrop of Nixon’s presidential election means to say as a statement or as a setting. Perhaps there is some parallel with the current political climate or some commentary about the end of American innocence, but I wasn’t keen enough to pick it up personally.

The date allows the movie to indulge in nostalgia for things like drive-in theaters and classic creature features. But if not for those recurring Nixon needles, you might never remember what year the film takes place in as even the absence of modern technology becomes a non-issue.

The stories Alvin Schwartz researched for his books of course came from longtime lore told and retold over countless decades. The movie incarnation doesn’t stop there in its employment of traditional tropes though. Particularly where characters are concerned, expect more than a few cinematic clichés to get swirled into the mix.

“Scary Stories” features four core friends anchored around Stella Nicholls. Stella meets the criteria for the introverted bookworm stereotype, sheepishly aspiring to be a writer yet afraid of any action that might leave her emotionally troubled single father in the lurch. She pals around with Chuck, the overly animated smart aleck, and Auggie, an awkward dork who is mostly misunderstood.

While running from Tommy, the letterman-jacketed school bully, Stella, Chuck, and Auggie meet Ramon. An out-of-towner who came to town for initially unknown reasons, Ramon and Stella take a mutual interest in one another while adding the fourth corner to their friend square.

Halloween Night presents the perfect time for the quirky quartet to explore a reportedly haunted mansion on a lark. Rumor has it the family who once lived there kept a daughter locked in a secret room. A writer like Stella, Sarah Bellows was thought to be behind a rash of child killings in the late 1800s. Supposedly, kids who came to the house in search of Sarah could ask for a story, except it would be the last story they ever heard.

Long backstory short, Stella and company confront the legend firsthand when they discover Sarah’s handwritten storybook. On the book’s empty pages, new tales supernaturally write themselves in blood right before Stella’s eyes. What’s worse, each yarn features someone Stella knows. Truth becomes as strange as fiction when the stories play out in reality, turning people all over town into tragic victims of terrible tales.

“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” takes its time ramping up. As a result, its pace isn’t as peppy as “Goosebumps.” Not that it should be or has to be since that lighter-stepping alternative already exists. Nevertheless, “Scary Stories” does feel effects of slowdown from the drag into dark dread where true-life horrors like The Vietnam War hang overhead.

Playing like a chain of linked vignettes as opposed to an anthology masquerading as a feature, individual stories have some of their kick reduced by featuring identical outcomes. “Scary Stories” includes live-action takes on “Harold,” “The Big Toe,” “The Dream,” “Me Tie Dough-ty Walker,” “The Red Spot,” and “The Haunted House.” The first four of those are just similar spins on a creature shambling toward a kid before consuming or transforming him somehow. I wouldn’t dub these segments as particularly deep, but maybe that’s the source material’s fault.

A criticism that cannot be boomeranged back to the books involves the film adaptation’s extended development history. John August drafted one script and Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton did another. Producer Guillermo del Toro shares “Story By” credit with Dunstan and Melton while Dan and Kevin Hageman are credited with actually writing the screenplay.

Ripples from that many cooks in the kitchen can be felt in some malnourished relationships. Dean Norris appears as Stella’s dad for a few scattered moments, only one of which has any real emotional weight. Gil Bellows plays a police chief without a first name, included to force a rivalry with Ramon that doesn’t receive real estate to fully bloom. Several arcs and introductions are clearly left over from deeper drafts but are now slimmer skeletons of their formerly fuller selves.

Luckily, director Andre Ovredal compensates for thin fiction with strong imagery that perfectly mimics Stephen Gammell’s memorable illustrations. Harold, The Pale Lady, The Jangly Man, and more appear in all their disproportionate glory as visual grotesqueries earning easy imprints in the mind’s eye. Hallways drenched in red lights, shadows beneath beds, and inescapable cornfield mazes all become nightmarish milieus for childhood fears given flesh. No matter what its narrative faults might be, “Scary Stories” certainly knows how to set unsettling moods capable of pimpling skin.

Another huge feather in the film’s cap comes courtesy of its charismatic cast. Zoe Colletti is incredibly endearing as Stella, almost heartbreakingly so. To its benefit or detriment depending on your angle of approach, sullen subplots take up a fair amount of space in “Scary Stories.” Colletti’s commitment to caging inner turmoil until turning it loose with waterworks tugs at heartstrings on a level fit for elevated drama.

Austin Abrams doesn’t stick around long, yet embodies a pitch perfect jock you just want to smack when he is onscreen. “Scary Stories” doesn’t completely capitalize on the camaraderie between Gabriel Rush and Austin Zajur as Chuck and Auggie. But yet again, when they are featured, their chemistry adds an air that leans the movie back toward amusing tones until creeps amp up with sentient severed heads and pop scares.

If the open ending has its way, plenty of untapped potential exists, certainly in the books but also in the friendship fostered between the main foursome, to harvest an even heartier sequel. For the time being, “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” has enough gas in its tank to get across the finish line on the strength of its roster, raw material, and flourishes of creepy creativity. There are definitely hiccups regarding how much slack exists in certain side stories, not to mention weakened impact from following familiar formulas. But considering all of the people and plotlines being wrangled, “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” has to qualify as a win. If not for fright film fandom as a whole, then at least for those born in the 21st century who hunger to sink appreciative teeth into PG-13 horror.

Review Score: 65

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