Caffeinated Clint
Despite the crossover appeal it would ultimately snare, Alvin Schwartz’s literary classic “Scary Stories To Tell in The Dark” had a clear target market and snug spot amongst the other young adult offerings on the shelf. Creepy but mostly ridiculous PG-horror yarns that stirred our senses, and spurred playground chatter largely because of the unsettling accompanying visuals and far-fetched scenarios within, the short stories were a perfect proxy for a generation too young to read Stephen King and too old to appreciate the then old-hat Universal monsters.
The same, as a viewing will attest, probably can’t be the said for Andre Øvredal’s film adaptation which, though an admirable and very attractive transfer, is a goat in a gorilla costume – a fun Sunday night Disney style-family horror piece that wants, likely for financial reasons, to convince it’s a harder, scarier genre piece for all.
The film’s tonal insecurities and irresolute motivation will be what blocks the release from becoming the breakout, crossover hit the source material was.
What the trailers and advertising material would have you believe is that “Scary Stories” is a goosebump-inducing horror anthology in the vein of “The Twilight Zone” or “Trick R’ Treat” is instead a rather harmless, kid-friendly jaunt that might be more at home on Nick-at-Nite than it is the cinema screen.
And besides coin, the reason they’ve done that is because for at least fifteen minutes, the film does start to transform into some sort of “It” meets “Children of the Corn” hybrid.
You see, a good seventy-percent of the film is harmless family film fluff, complete with the kind of straight, cookie-cutter style characters and playful dialogue usually found in Walt’s archives. The rest? Wildly out of place – though fantastically crafted – horror sequences, the likes of which will probably see most of the prime audience rushing to make an eyeshade out of their empty popcorn cup.
Story here invoices a bunch of teenagers who discover that a magical, sinister book is responsible for horrific events playing out in the real world. Basically, the stories appear on the pages (written in blood, of course) and then play out in the real world. It’s then up to Stella, Auggie, and Chuck (played by Zoe Margaret Colletti, Gabriel Rush, and Austin Zajur, respectively), as well as older, new guy in town Ramón (Michael Garza) to stop the force behind the stories, before they too end up succumbing to their own freshly-penned tragic fate.
The film prides itself on introducing to audiences a rather fresh faced cast, with Gil Bellows (remember Billy from “Ally McBeal”?) and Dean Norris (of “Breaking Bad”) among the few recognisable support players.
Though they’ve come up with a fairly clever way of bringing the books to the screen, the script moves slower than an emo kid in a football match.
It also doesn’t help that the protagonists are largely uninteresting (c’mon where’s the spunk in these kids!?), but for huge chunks of the picture there’s nothing to watch but cliched A to B to C story connecting.
And because they’ve gone for more of a cohesive narrative, as opposed to the likely more effective anthology film comprising of several short stories, it’s noticeable that they’ve has to pad this thing more than Melanie Griffith’s shoulders in “Working Girl” just to make the runtime.
Where the film does succeed though is in its production design – it’s actually worth sitting through the dull, stilted story just to see the incredible work that’s gone into recreating ‘60s Mill Valley. From the drive-in theater to the classic cars, costuming and Main Street, there’s some strong work on display here. Even better though is the creatures and monsters that (eventually) emerge from the pages of Schwartz’s book – like the fleshy scarecrow, the Jangly Man and even the pizza of spiders that sprogs from a cheek pimple.
These moments demonstrate just why Øvredal (“Troll Hunter”) and producer Guillermo del Toro got the go-ahead to do the film, their amazing knack for visually-stunning horror on display in each and every boo moment.
Come to the movie for the style, stick with the books for the substance.
