First published in 1981, the book “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” became the first of a series of horror stories aimed at younger audiences. The stories catered to a similar crowd as RL Stine’s Goosebumps books but Scary Stories author, Alvin Schwartz, researched folklore and urban legends to draw upon for his tales. In the process he wound up creating one of the American Library Association’s most frequently challenged book series due to its gruesome and disturbing imagery aimed at younger readers.

Now in 2019 we get the movie version, produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by Trollhunter and Autopsy of Jane Doe director André Øvredal. However, instead of adapting the stories faithfully as an anthology the film creates an overarching narrative to tie the tales together. The movie focuses on Stella Nicholls (played by Zoe Margaret Colletti) a young woman who acquires a book from a haunted house. This book contains a number of blank pages on which horror stories begin to appear, written in blood. These stories come to life as they are being written, effecting the lives of those around her.

Scary Stories is a film that engages with a classic B-movie pace and style. It successfully captures the feel of urban legend storytelling and crafts its jump scares effectively to keep its audience on edge. It contains imagery that is gruesome and creepy, alternating at times between comedic and scary, and will likely make a strong impression on the middle school set.

As a movie it does have some serious shortcomings, however. While the idea of using a singular narrative to tie the stories all together may be commendable, the execution comes off as hokey. It simply isn’t scary to watch writing appearing in the book and to subsequently see Stella running to try and save her friends. The movie would have been much more effective if it had simply let itself be an anthology collection, just like the short stories it is based on. The film seems to have a bit of an identity crisis (though admittedly this may also be true of the books) in that it clearly aims itself at a younger audience but then contains strong horrific imagery that would seem to be more than most younger children could enjoy. It also wraps its broader narrative story up too neatly in the end. It also inexplicably decides to set itself in the late 1960s and uses background imagery of Nixon, Vietnam, and draft dodging to no particular purpose.

Overall, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a reasonably entertaining B-movie that should appeal to middle schoolers and older audiences that have had a few beers on a Saturday night. It contains enough compelling and over-the-top imagery to entertain and engage for most of its two hour running time. However it is very much a “jump scare” funhouse ride of a horror film that won’t stick with you after it’s over. Its overarching narrative is weak and its ending is unsatisfying. This is the type of film you see and enjoy once and won’t have much need to go back to again.

3 out of 5 stars

It’s 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind… but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time—stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah’s terrifying tome.

Starring: Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Lorraine Toussaint, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn
Directed by: André Øvredal
Written by: Daniel Hageman & Kevin Hageman, Guillermo del Toro