Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

Directed by: André Øvredal | 108 minutes | horror | Actors: Zoe Margaret Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Lorraine Toussaint, Kathleen Pollard, Deborah Pollitt, Victoria Fodor, Marie Ward, Mark Steger, Javier Botet, Troy James Kyle Labine, David Tompa, Karen Glave, Stephanie Belding

‘Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark’ is a collection of separate stories that are kept together by an overarching story. Nice, but the danger of such a narrative structure is that the individual stories are not all equally strong or interesting. In the case of this film, the biggest problem is that the individual episodes are almost identical. You are in fact always looking at a variation on the same theme.

‘Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark’ is all about Stella. This young girl – and her father – are still haunted by her mother’s disappearance on Halloween. This holiday has nothing cheerful or festive in store for her. After a night of sulking, Stella decides to go out and with her two friends to take revenge on the local bully. This “joke” – throwing a bag of fecal matter collected from the toilet bowl at someone isn’t exactly a humorous act – is not to the liking and soon the bully is after the trio. As these teens hide in the home of a local legend—a ghost of a tormented lady—they bring on a lot of misery. They find a book that is said to have been written by the apparition. It soon becomes apparent that this book is quite interactive and also writes stories about Stella and her friends. Stories that don’t seem to end well. What now? How do you stop a book from writing itself?

You can compare a film like ‘Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark’ with the cult film ‘The Gate’ from the 80s. Also that production – in which a bunch of children dug a hole in the garden and on a portal of hell stumbled upon – aimed at younger viewers. So scary for teenagers. That is by no means meant to be derogatory. The cast consisting of mainly young main characters in combination with little blood results in a film that will be quite exciting for less experienced viewers, but will have few surprises for genre fans.

The ‘problem’ of ‘Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark’ is that the stories covered are almost identical. Person X is suddenly being chased by a monster/ghost/demon and has to escape. Almost all stories are about chases and eventually the trick becomes rather boring. Another point where this film misses out is in the area of ​​special effects. The Computer Generated Images (CGI) are flying around you and – like just about any film that works with these computer images – they seem quite outdated. What looked convincing and modern when it was made, is hopelessly dated when the film is released. Unfortunate.

What remains is a nicely acted horror film that doesn’t have much to say. ‘Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark’ is aimed at young people and this target group will certainly like this film.