I’m always going to fondly remember It (the TV miniseries, though the 2017 movie is also very good). Tim Curry’s clown was my first foray into horror movies. I saw it at a birthday party with my teenage friends, getting freaked out with each creepy Pennywise monologue. The teenage scary movie is a staple of any sleepover or teenage party, helping dip those kids’ toes into the horror water before deciding if they want to plunge head first into the genre. Scary Stores To Tell In the Dark would appear to be the sleepover movie for a new generation, offering a bunch of mini scary stories that are just scary enough to be watched, but not so scary that they’ll traumatize a 13 year old. Well maybe Ruth’s (Natalie Ganzhorn) will. Tread lightly during that portion.
As many scary movies do, To Tell In the Dark opens in a small town, Mill Valley Pennsylvania, on Halloween night. circumstances lead a cadre of the town’s teenagers to the creepy abandoned local mansion formerly owned by the mysterious Bellows family. Local horror afficionado teen Stella (Zoe Colletti) introduces the new in town Ramon (Michael Garza) to Sarah Bellows, the local town legend who told ghost stories to kids but was never actually seen. Stella takes the book the stories were written in home. Immediately, she notices that new stories are being written…about people who were also in the Bellows house with her. She, Ramon, and the others have to find out what happened quickly, before something horrible happens to them.
It’s always a good thing when Guillermo Del Toro is involved in your film (he helped write the screenplay), particularly a horror film. First, the movie starts by setting itself in 1968, making Scary Stories almost a legend itself, like the Bellows family in this movie, and would explain why books still really matter to kids in the movie. Each vignette is tied together by the Sarah Bellows journal, but they are also thematically tied: each creature or scare represents the deepest darkest fear of each person who the ghost writes about in their journal. Also a del Toro staple, there’s a host of monsters here. Each of them is distinct, and eliciting various emotions depending on the story; as del Toro has pointed out before, not all monsters are scary, some are just misunderstood. The scares also vary in style, keeping the viewer on their toes: some are creepy, some are pretty disgusting, and some rely on jump scares. As a barometer for the teens out there, Scary Stories gives you at least one example of each of the various example of films that exist within the horror genre, thanks in large part to del Toro’s depth of understanding about how to frighten people.
The best comp I can think of for Scary Stories is Final Destination. Each vignette leads to a disappearance only Stella and the others understand, and tension builds as we root for the plucky heroine and her friends to figure out what to do. While the vignettes play out like standard horror fare, the larger story gives an air of mystery to the proceedings, making you understand how Sarah Bellows became a piece of folklore. Like in Final Destination, the kids in the movie service the story well, with Stella and Ramon being stand outs. Though they’re all not as well developed as Stella or Ramon, each actor gives us enough to make us care of they should live (Chuck, the nerdy scaredy cat friend of Stella’s) or die (Tommy, the just douche of teenage jock).
There’s a knowingness to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark that gives it an assuredness that teenagers will respond to. I can see kids today, huddled around the laptop, as Tommy walks through a cornfield looked over by one of the creepier scarecrows in recent memory, and watching that scarecrow twitch into life, and then being blown away at how the story resolves itself. Before you can get to The Conjuring, you need a movie like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark to dip your toes first, and who better than Guillermo del Toro to guide you along in that journey.