SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK

How Guillermo del Toro will raise the next generation of fantasy fans with Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

That noise you can hear is Guillermo del Toro going bump in the night.

FROM CRONOS all the way up to the Oscar-winning The Shape Of Water, Guillermo del Toro has striven to bring fantasy into the mainstream, to have watercoolers everywhere become a hub for conversations that use words like “faun” and “goblin” and “fish-man penis”. “My role is evangelical,” he says. “I try to keep alive many traditions of the fantastic. When you’re growing up, you need narratives of the strange and the outer limits of fiction. This one specifically will hopefully convert the younger viewers to fantasy and the fantastic.”

“This one” is Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, a chilling, teen-friendly adaptation of the children’s books by Alvin Schwartz, which are huge in North America and del Toro’s native Mexico. The young del Toro was lured in by the “very difficult, very elaborate simplicity” of Schwartz’s storytelling, which spread over 70 folklore tales and urban legends across three books. “I remember that I was pretty broke when I saw the books in the bookstore,” says del Toro. “It took two or three excursions to the bookstore for me to decide to buy them. I treasure them.”

The wait paid off; the books were a crucial element in a young del Toro’s exploration of the fantasy genre, and now he’s keen to pass that on. The Scary Stories movie weaves some of Schwartz’s stories into a single ’60s-set narrative of a young girl (Zoe Margaret Colletti) who finds a spooky book, and subsequently experiences some seriously creepy shit.

But del Toro is just producing, not directing, handing the reins to director André Øvredal. “He said, ‘Go and make it. Forget about what I would have done,’” Øvredal explains. But it will still feel like a del Toro movie. “It contains really unsettling and creepy set-pieces,” he says. “But it’s not gory at all. It’s not grotesque. It’s very playful.” And if it happens to entrance the next Guillermo del Toro, then all the better.

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK IS IN CINEMAS FROM 23 AUGUST

Clockwise from top: Spooky house lurking amidst whispering trees? Check; Del Toro with Zoe Margaret Colletti (Stella) and director André Øvredal; Trouble at Mill Valley for Auggie (Gabriel Rush).

Guillermo del Toro and André Øvredal spoke to Empire over the phone on 22 May.