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.
There has been a tremendous amount of hype and promotion surrounding “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” the first big-screen adaptation of Alvin Schwartz’s collection of short horror stories for children. I actually knew nothing about the books before seeing the trailers for its celluloid counterpart and I have to admit, the visuals piqued my interest. The fact that producer Guillermo del Toro and director André Øvredal were attached, made the film even more promising. Øvredal’s “Trollhunter” and “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” made him the perfect choice to helm “Stories” and with all manner of nightmarish creatures involved, del Toro’s participation meant that he would most certainly have some input into the creatures’ design, à la “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Hellboy.”
Lo and behold, in lieu of giving the audience a genuinely scary ride through hell, we are instead given a PG-13 episode of “Goosebumps” that starts out with an auspicious narrative only to slowly succumb into clichéd and conventional storytelling. While the central cast does fine with their respective roles, they are relegated to lackluster personas that perform all of the mandatory horror tropes associated with a movie of this ilk; kids find an old creepy house? Check! Make their way inside and get locked in the scary basement? Check! Strange things start to happen to them once they leave the haunted house? Check! And the list goes on. While it most certainly has some effectively creepy moments, especially the scene including Harold the Scarecrow, for the most part, we are presented with a by-the-numbers, ponderous tale that never seems to make an effort to impress.
It is Halloween, 1968 and the residents of a small American town are preparing for the annual spooky holiday. Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) and her two best friends, Chuck (Austin Zajur) and Auggie (Gabriel Rush), hit the town dressed up in costumes but their plan is not to collect candy, instead, it is to exact revenge against the high school bully, Tommy (Austin Abrams), who has persecuted the three of them relentlessly. After executing their plan, he gives chase and they wind up in the local drive-in theater in the back of a stranger’s car, Ramón Morales’ (Michael Garza). Stella is immediately drawn to Ramón and after losing Tommy and his friends, being Halloween night, she takes them to a supposedly haunted house on the outskirts of town. Once inside, Ramón and Stella discover a hidden room in the basement and after she tells them the history of the house, specifically Sarah Bellows (Kathleen Pollard), the youngest daughter in the Bellows family who was supposedly locked up in the basement for practicing black magic, Stella unearths an old book of scary stories that she quickly realizes belonged to Sarah, a book that allegedly had supernatural abilities and was somehow connected to the disappearance of many locals back in the day.
She takes the book with her and over the next few days, people start mysteriously disappearing and both she and Ramón bear witness to the book writing new stories by itself that include her friends and those around her. Each individual story revolves around one specific friend and forces them to confront their deepest, darkest fears, with most of them falling victim to their own internal demons. With time running out, Stella and Ramón make their way back to the Bellows house to try and stop Sarah from taking their lives and when they get separated, Stella must descend into the basement by herself and face off against the evil that dwells there.
Characters facing the physical manifestations of their own personal fears is nothing new and was done to greater effect in Paul W.S. Anderson’s “Event Horizon,” Andy Muschietti’s “IT,” and to a lesser extent, Susanne Bier’s “Bird Box.” I feel had the filmmakers given the movie an “R” rating instead of PG-13, they could have gotten away with a lot more in terms of nightmarish images and while an “R” rating doesn’t necessarily guarantee a box office hit, “Event Horizon” and “IT” are perfect examples of films that succeeded in scaring their audiences because their rating allowed them to push their boundaries further. The three books that make up ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ are very graphic in their depiction of the monsters that appear throughout its pages so it would make perfect sense that in order to remain faithful to these illustrations, a film adaptation with an “R” rating would do more justice than a PG-13.
Director André Øvredal creates a smalltown atmosphere similar to Andy Muschietti’s “IT” and, to a smaller degree, “Stranger Things,” as the 1968 presidential election looms large in the background, with frequent references to the Vietnam War. The film also commits the cardinal sin of assuming it will be successful and sets up the obligatory sequel, something I wish they had avoided as we are promised many of the unresolved questions at the end of the movie will be answered somewhere down the line. Nothing like arrogant presumption.
In Theaters Friday, August 9th
