‘SCARY’ MONSTERS
HORROR MEISTER DEL TORO TURNS TO KID-SIZED FRIGHTS
NEW YORK — Guillermo del Toro’s childhood obsession with horror movies has given him a spectacular Oscar-winning career. Next Friday’s “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” is a dream project for “The Shape of Water” auteur, who wanted to make a PG-13 rated monster movie kids could see.
Partly because “Scary Stories” has kids reading a book of stories. “The book reacts to who’s reading it and reacts to the story,” del Toro, 54, explained. “In ‘The Big Toe,’ it’s a monster looking for his big toe.”
He hired Norwegian “Trollhunter’ helmer Andre Ovredal to direct. “He has an accent worse than mine,” del Toro joked.
“Being able to work with Guillermo for a movie he co-wrote and produced is like a dream come true,” Ovredal said. “I fell in love with these urban horror tales that balance humor and scares.
“I wanted to make it not a nasty horror movie but a fun, scary movie. So we aimed for a PG-13 rating. We didn’t want to go too young but we still had to honor the fact that these are books for a younger audience.”
“There’s three books,” del Toro added. “We retrofitted the characters. Augie, for example, is always complaining about what goes into hot dogs and of course he has the toe in his soup.”
Horror movies, del Toro believes, are ideal springboards. “The tragedy of horror is not to have your parents talk to you about it. When you’re a kid, you’re curious about two things: sex and death. The rest you can find in a manual,” this father of two joked.
“A lot of parents shy away from discussing those two things. We live in a real world, knowing the darkness has a structure and so does the light. You can share this with your kids.
“I wish my father or my mother had taken time to watch ‘Night Gallery’ with me. It really is good that exists because the other thing you experience as a kid is the world is constantly telling you that everything is great — shampoo commercials, car commercials, yogurt commercials and movies where there are people like nobody you know.
“Horror movies tell you there’s a dark side, don’t worry. You may find a little solace with that fact.” (“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” opens Aug. 9.)