SCARY STORES TO TELL IN THE DARK (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

scary stories to tell in the dark (2019) movie

Genre              |   Horror Thriller

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   108 minutes

Released         |   25 September  2019

cast

Zoe Margaret Colletti ... Stella Nicholls
Michael Garza ... Ramón Morales
Austin Zajur ... Chuck Steinberg
Gabriel Rush ... Auggie Hilderbrandt
Dean Norris ... Roy Nicholls
​Gil Bellows ... Chief Turner

director

​André Øvredal

writer

Dan Hageman ... (screenplay by) &
Kevin Hageman ... (screenplay by)
 
John August ... (screenplay)
Guillermo del Toro ... (screenplay)
Marcus Dunstan ... (screenplay)
Patrick Melton ... (screenplay)
Alvin Schwartz ... (book)

cinematographer

​​Roman Osin

music

​Marco Beltrami
Anna Drubich

film editor

​Patrick Larsgaard

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box office result

Worldwide               $​105,954,340

Australia                 $​1,655,064

North America        $​68,947,075

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movie minutiae

Based on the SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK book series published in the 1980s, written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell.

In January 2016, it was announced that Guillermo del Toro would develop the project for CBS Films with potential attachment to direct, while he would also produce the film along with Sean Daniel, Jason Brown, and Elizabeth Grave.

​In February 2016, CBS Films hired screenwriting brothers duo Dan and Kevin Hageman to polish the draft written by August, and before him the script was written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton.

In December 2017, it was reported that André Øvredal would direct the film.

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SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

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SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

​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 home.

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 25 September 2019

Pop ​Movee Rating

Andre Overdal’s SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK is a well-made, genuinely tense Horror film that relies on psychological torment more than it does outright violence to be one of the better genre films to find its way into cinemas so far in 2019.

Curiously, if audiences were asked to gauge their interest in SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK based upon the fear level generated by the film’s trailer, then, there may not be much of a turn-out for this feature film adaptation of Alvin Schwartz novels…

Nothing in the trailer suggested that Overdal’s film would be anywhere near as good as what it turns out to be...

Perhaps the lure of the IT (2017) audience was on the minds of the film’s distributors when cutting together the most recent trailer, hoping to attract a broad church of moviegoers in an effort to cash in on the recent, mainstream success of Horror Thrillers; setting up an opportunity explore more of Schwartz’s stories in future films. 

Fortunately, SCARY STORIES is not a try-hard version of Andy Muschietti’s film. It’s actually a better Horror film than either IT or the recently released sequel and is more effective than the bulk of what’s being produced via Blumhouse. Overdal employs greater technique, delivering a film with its share of scares, but one that also possesses a strong emotional core and contemporary relevance, in spite of the story’s 1968 setting.

Overdal’s 2016 Horror film THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE was one of the better genre efforts to come out that year and, with SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK, he proves the tension he created in that film was no happy accident. JANE DOE was genuinely creepy and had moments of pulse-freezing tension as two “Small Town USA” coroners are confronted by a malevolent presence while conducting an autopsy on an unidentified woman. SCARY STORIES has the same kind of tension, but the violence has been toned down a little to give the film a chance at Box Office success.

The Horror may have been toned down a little, appealing to a broader (younger) audience, but GOOSEBUMPS (2016) this ain’t.

Overdal uses his troupe of young performers to maximum effect as events in the small town of Mill Valley, Pennsylvania take a turn for the supernatural after a visit by a group of young teens to the local “Haunted House”...

The first in the original series of Alvin Schwartz books dates back all the way to October 1981 and contains twenty-nine short stories, the second was published in 1984 and has a further twenty-eight stories. The final book was published in 1991and has twenty-five stories. Schwartz was best known for his SCARY STORIES series, but he had over fifty books published throughout his writing career.

The film’s screenplay, credited to the film’s Producer Guillermo del Toro and writing duo Dan & Keving Hageman, takes stories from all three of Schwartz’s books and weaves together an impressive series of cinematic vignettes that see Zoe Margaret Colletti’s Stella, along with friends Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur), encounter increasingly bizarre and disturbing events connected to an antique book of stories Stella stumbled across at the aforementioned Haunted House.

Colletti is excellent as Stella, anchoring the film with her portrayal of an aspiring young Horror writer who hasn’t quite found her literary voice, navigating her way through the trials of being a smart teenage girl in small, hick town. 

A chance meeting on Halloween night introduces Stella to Ramon (Michael Garza), whose car proves to be the safest place for her, Auggie and Chuck to hide from local bully Tommy (Austin Abrams) after the trio prank him in his car while out on a Halloween night date with Chuck’s sister, Ruth (Natalie Ganzhorn).

Taking advantage of the opportunity for a safe getaway from Tommy, Stella encourages Ramon to drive her and her friends to the local Haunted House, formerly owned by the town’s wealthiest family, the Bellows. 

Stella recounts the tale of Sarah Bellows, who was supposedly locked away by her family in a cellar-like room to hide her strange appearance from the outside world. Sarah was said to have haunted the house after the Bellows family abandoned the home and lured young children to their fate, whispering terrifying tales through the walls of her prison-like room...

Stella escapes the Bellows home with a book written by Sarah, recounting various ghastly tales about misfortune that befell those who crossed her path. Stella soon learns that possessing Sarah’s book turns from a curiosity to a terror, discovering Sarah has the ability to write new stories on the book’s pages from beyond the grave!

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK has a lot of good things to recommend it; a strong screenplay, a good cast and a director who knows exactly the effect he wants to achieve. In support of Overdal, JANE DOE Cinematographer Roman Osin reteams with Overal to help him deliver a film that is also visually striking. Overdal and Osin use a combination of sets and locations, combined with both real and artificial lighting to help create tone and texture. One of the more impressive sequences involves the use of a cornfield for a night and a day sequence that sees one of Sarah’s stories come to life in a most disturbing manner.

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK is far better than one might expect from this type of film. In much the same way he did with THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE, Andre Overdal surprises the viewer with a quality film that doesn’t rely on jump scares or torture porn to punctuate the Horror. In many ways, Overdal’s film is a superior version of Producer Guillermo del Toro’s own “Haunted House” flick CRIMSON PEAK (2015), based upon a similar concept that the house, in some way, has a story to tell and it’s not necessarily a happy one…

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (film) - Wikipedia
​Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019) - IMDb
​Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes​

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