Movie Reaction: Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark

Formula: The Ring Jr. * Final Destination

That's a great title, right? There's no mystery to that. It tells you everything you need to know right away. Stories - plural: that hints at an anthology structure, or at least multiple distinct set pieces. Scary - Not terrifying, not horrifying. Just scary. This is sort of mild but still unsettling. Tell in the dark - A lot of events happening at night and there's some device for stories being told as opposed to simply happening. All put together, you can practically see the group of preteens circled around the camp fire.

Breaking down the title points out something very important but easy to forget: you need to meet a movie at its level. Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark (SSTTIND, for short) isn't a horror movie that's meant for me. As much as I like horror, my favorites tend to be a lot more severe. SSTTIND is more of a kid's introduction to horror. It's focuses more on scary images than scary thoughts. The story doesn't have to make a lot of logical sense. The characters can be more broadly built. And the best thing I can say about this movie is that if I was the right age, I could see this being a movie I'd remember fondly. I'm not sure I'd like it when I was 9 or 10. But, if I saw it when I was that age, it would become a "childhood classic" that I'd remember decades later.

SSTTIND starts, of course, on Halloween night, 1968. A group of misfits teens dress up, get in some trouble, and eventually explore an abandoned house outside of town. Legend says that a little girl was kept locked up in the house by her family. Children would visit the house and, through the wall, hear the girl tell them stories. All those children would die soon after. Naturally, the 1968 children find the girl's book of stories and take it home. Soon after, new scary stories begin appearing in the book that tell tales of how the different children in the house that night die. And, the things in the stories actually happen. Children die!  As their numbers whittle, the children have to find a way to stop the stories from happening before it's their turn to die.

Side Note: I know the characters are all teens. I'm calling them "children" because that's the receptive audience the characters have been written for.

It's a very dumb story. The explanation doesn't make much sense. In fact, it offers more answers than a horror movie really needs to. That's entirely due to the target audience. Younger audiences need more things explained for a story to feel complete. That said, the world of this movie makes enough sense for the scary set pieces to be effective. The placement in 1968 is strange only because of how much it's referenced. They keep bringing up the Nixon election and the Vietnam war. It does sort of tie into the story eventually but in a very unnecessary way.

The young cast is pretty good. Zoe Margaret Colletti is on the nerdier side of the "final girl" spectrum, but she's a decent protagonist. The movie never does reckon with the fact that most of what happens is her fault. Michael Garza is fine as a loner passing through town. The movie throws some much bigger societal obstacles at him (he's Latino) than it's really interested in exploring. Colletti's two nerd friends, played by Austin Zajur and Gabriel Rush are fine. Zajur is mostly comic relief. Rush is sort of stoic. I kept getting distracted because he carries himself like Jason Sudeikis. Not in a funny way. Just in a way that kept making me think "Sudeikis". There are some familiar adult actors like Dean Norris and Lorraine Toussaint (OK, maybe those are the only two). They mostly stay out of the way, play it up for a couple scenes, then collect their paychecks.

With the understanding of what its target audience is, SSTTIND is perfectly enjoyable. It plays in basic childhood archetypes in an 80's Speilbergian way. While it never reaches the level of endearing, it does clear the bar of earnest, which is good enough. It hints at future adventures with these characters that I don't need at all. One movie is plenty.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend