A teen horror film that has spirit
Seems like nobody reads books anymore. Everybody’s just too busy, and, besides, reading would cut into valuable time that could be spent on video games, constant streaming and endless internet surfing.
So it’s kind of exciting when a whole movie revolves around a book. But wouldn’t you know it? In the new horror film “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” the book is the villain.
Produced by Guillermo del Toro and based on a 1980s book of short horror stories for the young, “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” keeps its young adult credentials with a PG13 rating and a team of cando teenagers, led by Zoe Margaret Colletti in a starmaking performance.
Set in smalltown Mill Valley, Pa., it begins on Halloween 1968, when a group of high school kids — Stella (Colletti), Auggie (Gabriel Rush), Chuck (Austin Zajur) and newkid drifter Ramon (Michael Garza) — decide to enter a boarded mansion that is rumored to be a haunted house. The house, owned by a family who ran the nowdefunct paper mill in town, has been abandoned since the turn of the century and was the site of terrible abuse of the family’s daughter, Sarah, who died there after a spell in a mental institution.
When the kids go in, they don’t encounter ghosts, but they do encounter their badkid classmates, led by greaser Tommy (Austin Abrams) and girlfriend Ruth (Natalie Ganzhorn), Chuck’s sister. The kids get locked in the mansion and eventually escape, but not before Stella finds Sarah’s dusty, hidden diary.
That’s when the trouble begins. As Stella is reading the diary, a new story forms before her eyes on the blank pages. Each tale culminates in the death of one of the teens who entered the house, beginning with Tommy, who is attacked by the scarecrow in the family cornfield. Suddenly, Stella and Co. must figure out how to break the curse before each of them dies, one by one.
Amusingly, when the kids are in danger and searching for each other, there are constant screams of “Stella! Stella!!!” Paging Stanley Kowalski. So, kinda fun. “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” is almost like a liveaction “ScoobyDoo” without the dog, maybe even with a little “Stranger Things” vibe. But the story exposition is awkward — the screenplay and story are credited to five writers, one of them del Toro, none of them Tennessee Williams — and Norwegian director André Øvredal struggles with some clunky sequences early in the film.
There’s also a weird attempt to tie the impending horror to the election of Richard Nixon. The story takes place between Halloween and Nov. 5, 1968, when Nixon was elected president over Hubert Humphrey; every so often, a TV shows either a report from the Vietnam War or scenes from the presidential campaign. It doesn’t really work.
However, the film finally gets into gear around the midpoint and zooms to a satisfying finish. Two elements are most interesting: Stella, who feels guilty because her mother abandoned the family when she was young, begins to identify with the unloved Sarah. To try to break the spell, the kids have to do research work in the library and at a hospital, sifting through old newspapers and medical records, to find Sarah’s true story.
So “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” ultimately celebrates reading and the joy of discovery through the written word. Oh, to be in 1968 again.