Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, by Alvin Schwartz, has been a fixture since the early eighties. I was a bit too old for Scholastic at the time, but my daughter had a copy that I read recently. I heard about the 2019 film before it came out (and I’m having trouble believing it was all the way back before the pandemic). It’s more of a Halloween movie and since it features young actors it had translated to a “kids’ movie” in my head. I suppose the PG-13 rating contributed to that. Sill, it turns out that it’s a proper horror film, but not too scary. The story is partially by Guillermo del Toro, so I had some idea of what to expect. I’m glad I watched it, even though the right season is still months away. Therapy is welcome any time of year.
Anthology films often don’t work well, and this one manages to avoid that by constructing an overarching narrative. The teens, visiting a haunted house on Halloween night, find a book by a hidden family member who’d hanged herself but who was rumored to tell stories to those who ask. The book, written in blood, writes new stories featuring each of the kids, telling their bizarre deaths. Since there are six main kids there are six main subplots and some of them are quite effective. Scarecrows aren’t like the kind you find in Oz. And two of the good kids end up missing while this is played off against the Vietnam War (it’s set in 1968). One of the characters has been drafted and is being shipped off to the war as the film ends. Since the final girls (there are two) are committed to finding the lost kids, a sequel seems inevitable.
The setting of fictional Mill Valley is a Pennsylvania town, and it’s nice to see my home state getting some attention outside M. Night Shyamalan movies. I’ve always felt there was more creepy potential here than has been explored. And autumn is generally beautiful in the commonwealth. Although I watched the movie out of season (while it was free to do so on Amazon Prime), it has landed on my list of films to watch in October. It manages to get that feel right and I know that come the autumn I’ll have a hankering for that sensation. It’s not really that scary, but it manages to be worth an adult’s time and attention. And it makes me want to read the book again. And horror can work for therapy, even when it’s starting to get hot outside.
