[Once again I'm going to attempt to do
a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. I've done
this the last few years on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I
succeeded. Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can pull it off this year.]
Review by Bob Ignizio
There’s no new cemetery ground being broken in SCARY
STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK, but to a degree that’s part of the appeal. The
series of books of the same name by Alvin Schwartz collected various spooky
stories and urban legends. The film takes those tales and incorporates them
into a fairly standard issue “revenge from beyond the grave” template to
deliver a film that favors thrills and chills over violence and gore. But
thanks to the skillful direction of André Øvredal (TROLLHUNTER, THE
AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE) and a visual aesthetic that takes its cues from the
creepy illustrations in the original books, the film finds ways to be scary
without being bloody.
The screenplay by brothers Dan and Kevin Hageman (with
contributions by producer Guillermo del Toro, Patrick Melton, and Marcus Dunstun)
centers around a group of teens in 1968. Stella (Zoe Colletti), Auggie (Gabriel
Rush), and Chuck (Austin Zajur) are a trio of outsiders who plan to get revenge
on bully Tommy Milner (Austin Abrams) and his toadies. Their plan works, but later
they, along with teenage drifter Ramon (Michael Garza), wind up trapped in the
neighborhood haunted house.
