13 Nights of Shocktober: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

 by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 8: Youth Horror Night

Don’t you ever laugh as a hearse goes by/For you may be the next to die

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

A movie based on the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series has a lot to live up to. These stories, a collection of folktales, urban legends, songs, and poems written by Alvin Schwartz and the frightening, nightmarish drawings by Stephen Gammell are indeed scary, so much so that they fully traumatized and fascinated an entire generation of children, myself included. If you read only a few of the stories or saw any of the drawings, you never forgot them. The books, published between 1981 and 1991, caused all sorts of controversies and protests from parents and sold millions and millions of copies. A wonderful and impressive oversight by my Catholic elementary school meant that I bought my copies at the school book fair. My mother thought some of the stories were amusing but they thoroughly disturbed me as a first grader, so she gave them to a friend whose child was very excited by them. I’ve seen the movie twice now, but I’ve never revisited the books. 

The Scary Stories books would have made for a great anthology film but the team behind the camera, including producer Guillermo Del Toro, who receives a screen story credit with Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, screenwriters Dan and Kevin Hageman, and director Andre Ovredal give us a compelling narrative worked around the short stories. Set in the Autumn of 1968, during that extra spooky time between Halloween and Election Day, the plot follows high schooler Stella and her friends Auggie and Chuck. On Halloween Night while fleeing a malicious and dangerous bully, they meet Ramon, a teenage drifter, and end up hiding out in the town’s old haunted house. Stella finds a book full of stories handwritten by Sarah Bellows, the dreadful witch that poisoned children at the turn of the century. Then new stories appear in the book, written in fresh, wet blood that tap into the fears of teens and foretell their doom.

Scenes involving the monsters are legitimately frightening. Perhaps the most well-known is Harold the scarecrow, who the bully encounters in a cornfield on Halloween night. The most frightening and disturbing scene for me had one of the characters trapped in a red room with a pale faced woman coming towards him from every end of every hallway. The blend of computer generated and practical effects is very well done. The creatures of Harold and the Pale Faced Woman are as frightening and haunting as the original drawings. The climax combines action, scares, and monsters with a full realization of the themes and subtext in a compelling and masterful way.   

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark believes that if stories are told enough, they become real, even if they are about yourself. This is what Stella, played wonderfully by Zoe Margaret Coletti, with Velma from Scooby-Doo glasses and smarts to match, comes to realize about her town’s legendary witch and even about herself. Her mother left mysteriously when she was little and the town has circulated rumors ever since. Ramon (Michael Garza) is pegged by the all-American looking bully as a “wet-back” and by the well-intentioned but misguided town sheriff (Gil Bellows) as a suspicious person to blame the recent misfortunes on. Ramon is on the run from something, but there is more to the truth than first assumptions.

The young actors are especially good and believable at playing teenagers. Most of the movie is Stella, Ramon, Auggie, and Chuck investigating the history of Sarah Bellows and her book of stories to save themselves before it is too late. Being 1968, this means that they look at microfiche newspaper archives and old records buried away in forgotten rooms. These scenes reminded me of the better episodes of The X-Files and the scenes of them snooping around an old house reminded me of the original Scooby-Doo series. There are lighter moments and levity that not only relieve tension but build the characters and their relationships with each other. The screenplay and performers do a great job creating characters we want to see escape the monsters, which is something rare for horror films.  

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is also that most elusive and improbable kind of horror movie: a scary PG-13 movie. The confrontations with the monsters and other horrors are as creepy and scary as anything in an R-rated horror movie. You don’t need blood and gore when you have impending, inescapable dread. The visual style and aesthetic sets the film firmly in the real world, so when the characters are confronted with the supernatural it is all the more disconcerting and frightening. This movie is something quite rare these days, a horror movie for kids. Not just a horror themed movie for kids, but a movie with real frights and scares, with compelling themes and enough substance to become something that every great horror movie is: haunting. In that way, the movie is very true to the books.