Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark directed by Andre Ovredal. Image courtesy of Lionsgate.
Recently, Disney remade The Lion King in an attempt to cash in on our fond memories of childhood, and I don’t mean to get hyperbolic here, but it was a crime against humanity. It then went on to announce planned remakes of other treasured childhood classics, such as Home Alone. Clearly, having spent tens of billions of dollars to acquire Fox, Disney is now morally and creatively bankrupt. We have created a golem, and we shall come to regret it.
Wringing value out of old IP is having a moment in Hollywood. Horror is also having a bit of moment, with the Conjuring Universe straddling the industry, and hits like It, The Babadook and It Follows elevating what could have been run of the mill genre fare. So naturally, why not combine the corporate imperative to mine wistful 1990s nostalgia with the resurgent popularity of horror? Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was, therefore, basically just begging to be made.
And you know what? It does a good job. Is this because Guillermo del Toro was involved? Who knows. People will probably chalk it up to his name being in the credits, but the property went through a fairly long development process so who knows ultimately who is responsible for which parts. What I do know is that I really enjoyed this movie and I feel like it does justice to the source material. It certainly probably helps that the project went to an excellent genre director, Norway’s André Øvredal who made 2010’s classic Trollhunter.
Full disclosure: I am a 90s kid. And yes, I remember reading these spooky ghost story anthologies with my brother back when I was but a wee sprout and absolutely loving them. The film does justice to those memories by paying homage to the source material but also weaving it smartly into a cohesive narrative around an old rich family and a dark secret, and using some spunky teenage protagonists to anchor everything. Yeah the ending turns a bit vanilla, with some cliched redemptive arc for our main character and a ghost, but perfection is the enemy of the good as they say.
The film is smartly structured so that is plays like an anthology - some of the greatest hits are introduced in their own little vignettes and much of the visual style is drawn straight from the demented illustrative work of Stephen Gammell, which helps a lot. This allows the story to work as a collection of brilliantly staged set pieces that, unlike the recent Annabelle Comes Home, also work together in service of a larger narrative and characters that you actually care about.
It’s pretty scary and spooky (but still probably OK for older kids), but because the source material it draws upon is so rich, and it is skillfully translated to the screen, the whole thing feels satisfying and enjoyable, and does not feel just like a naked cash grab intended to milk our childhood memories for profits. Given the current climate in Hollywood and the apparent obsession with converting 1990s nostalgia into revenue for corporate behemoths, this is perhaps the highest compliment I can pay to this film.