‘Scary Stories’ a kid’s fright feast
Guillermo del Toro crafts creepiness for youngsters
Oscar-winning horror auteur Guillermo del Toro is among the world’s biggest horror fans. “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” is his valentine to plucky kids everywhere.
The “Shape of Water” maestro devised the “screen story” for Alvin Schwartz’s bestselling children’s horror books and is the lead producer.
“Scary Stories,” set in 1968, begins with a haunting warning as Donovan’s classic “Season of the Witch” croons on the soundtrack. There’s a sweetly nostalgic “Stand By Me” vibe as we meet the best buddies Auggie (Gabriel Rush), Chuck (Austin Zajur) and Stella (Zoe Colletti) making elaborate plans for Halloween.
There’s also Tommy (Austin Abrams), the town’s sadistic bully who’s just signed up to fight in Vietnam.
When Tommy and his crew are revenge-pranked, the threat of violence escalates and our plucky trio find themselves hiding in a car at the drive-in (onscreen: the classic “Night of the Living Dead”).
The car’s sole occupant is Ramon (Michael Garza), who is homeless and mocked by Tommy as a “wetback.”
When the kids hide in a deserted “haunted house” known for its sinister saga of the insane Sarah Bellows and her fatal curses, “Scary Stories” begins its descent into darkness.
Stella discovers Sarah’s book of scary stories, takes it home and immediately realizes that the book writes a story — in red blood yet! — that comes true as she reads it.
Drunken Tommy, who hates the gruesome, maggotfilled scarecrow in a local cornfield, is suddenly confronted with a very angry, malignant straw man.
As the kids realize to their horror what horrors are actually happening, the book relentlessly writes its stories. There’s a corpse looking for its missing big toe, a spider bite on a girl’s cheek that isn’t pretty.
Adults like the local cop (Gil Bellows), who don’t take the kids seriously, quickly regret their skepticism.
What’s most unusual here is how Norwegian helmer Andre Ovredal (“Trollhunter”) uses Richard Nixon’s winning presidential campaign as a backdrop. Wherever the kids go, Nixon appears on black and white TVs.
Nixon, we know, will resign in disgrace, but who could have expected his malevolence to hover over the terrors these spunky kids must face?