Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Movie Review
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a 2019 horror film directed by Andre Ovredal. It’s a solid, fun little flick.
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“You don’t read the book.
It reads you“
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The shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large in the small town of Mill Valley for generations. It’s in a mansion that young Sarah Bellows turns her tortured life and horrible secrets into a series of scary stories. These terrifying tales soon have a way of becoming all too real for a group of unsuspecting teens who stumble upon Sarah’s spooky home.
From very early on, I could easily deduct that this movie was based on a book, a series of books actually. That’s because it’s abundant in details, and actually rather colorful in both backstories and various settings. And it has that charm to it that only books can provide.
With that being said, obviously the adapted screenplay itself is problematic and rather weak at times. That’s most evident in the characterization department as the characters are uniformly badly developed. Stella and Ramon are the most memorable ones, but even they needed bigger personalities and much more development.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark obviously isn’t as scary as purportedly the books were, but some scenes here are very memorable and crazy. All of the creatures looked very strong in particular, and I loved the gross-out moments a lot. The pimple scene was particularly gruesome.
Thus, the film may seem a bit too scary for children, but never particularly effective for adults, though admittedly its charm is very much in the right place that I enjoyed the film quite a bit. The dialogue could have been better, though. And there are many illogical behaviors from all of its characters which really bothered me.
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But visually speaking, the film is very strong, and it utilizes on all of its settings remarkably well. Its episodic nature was actually a plus here as it led to a more varied, more interesting movie. But it had the potential for much more instead of becoming a somewhat inferior version of ‘It’ or ‘Stranger Things’.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is very illogical in a lot of characters’ behaving, their development is overall quite weak and the film as a whole could have been much better, but it’s still a solid, charming family horror flick with abundant details in terms of storytelling, greatly utilized, numerous settings and a fine episodic feel to it.
