SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK : Tuesday 1st October 2019.

'SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK' is an M Rated American horror film, which I saw earlier this week, and is Directed by Norwegian film maker, Producer and Screenwriter Andre Ovredal whose previous screen credits include 'Trollhunter' and 'The Autopsy of Jane Doe'. Here Guillermo del Toro is given a Co-Producer credit together with a co-credit for devising the story based up on the best selling three book series of short horror stories for children of the same name by Alvin Schwartz, published in 1981, 1984 and 1991. The film was released in the US in mid-August, cost US$28M to make, has so far grossed US$94M and has generated mostly positive Press.

Here, the shadow of the wealthy Bellows family has loomed large in the small town of Mill Valley, Pennsylvania for generations. It is 1968 and we are first introduced to three teenage friends - Stella Nicholls (Zoe Colletti) a budding amateur horror writer; Auggie Hilderbrandt (Gabriele Rush) and Chuck Steinberg (Austin Zajur) who play a Halloween prank on local bully boy Tommy Milner (Austin Abrams) and his mates. When that prank backfires on the three friends, Milner gives chase to the local drive in movie screening of 'Night of the Living Dead' and the trio seek refuge in the car of loner Ramon Morales (Michael Garza). When Milner is moved on by the locals for interrupting their enjoyment of the movie, the three invite Ramon to explore a real haunted house, especially apt considering that it is Halloween after all. Driving up to the abandoned house now boarded up, padlocked and graffiti laden from years of neglect, they are easily able to gain entry and venture inside.

Once inside they reveal to Ramon that the house once belonged to the wealthy Bellows family who owned a mill upon which the town of Mill Valley was founded. Inside Stella and Ramon come across a secret room in which the alleged crazed Sarah Bellows is said to have hanged herself by her own hair in 1898 after years of torment and torture by her uncaring family, and now seemingly haunts the abandoned mansion. Stella comes across an old book while rummaging through the dusty cupboards, nooks and crannies of Sarah's former dungeon, that contains a series of short horror stories supposedly written in her own blood. Having tailed the group, Tommy locks them inside the room along with Ruth (Natalie Ganzhorn), Chuck's sister and Tommy's occasional girlfriend. They escape having been released by an unknown presence, and discover that Tommy had wrecked Ramon's car before he left. Stella offers Ramon a bed in her basement for the night because he has no where else to go, and she takes Sarah's book home with her.

Later that evening Stella reads the book of scary stories and discovers that a new story scribed in fresh blood, entitled 'Harold', has been freshly written, and the main character is a 'Tommy'. That same night Tommy return to his family farm under the influence of alcohol and is told to deliver a batch of eggs to the neighbours - even though it is late. Having collected a dozen newly laid eggs he begins his trek through the cornfield to the neighbours place. Here, he is stalked by a human like Scarecrow - Harold (Mark Steger). Tommy attempts to fight it, but the Scarecrow stabs him through the back with a four pronged pitchfork. Soon after, he begins to vomit straw and produce the same from his arms, legs, nose and ears incapacitating him while he violently begins to transform into a scarecrow himself. The next day, Tommy is reported missing. Stella and Ramon investigate and find a scarecrow wearing Tommy's College jacket clothes, and although Stella is convinced that Tommy has been turned into a scarecrow, the others are wary of her theory.

The next night, Stella and Ramon witness a new story being written as they watch on in the book. Titled 'The Big Toe', this time with Auggie as the main character. The pair attempt to warn him about a zombie searching for its missing toe, which is inside a stew that Auggie unwittingly eats from a pot fresh out of the fridge. Auggie is attacked by the zombie (Javier Botet) and disappears after it drags him under his bed, leaving only the scratch makes of his dragged fingernails on the floorboards, which disappear into the skirting board.

Stella, Ramon, and Chuck come to deduce that they are next in line and so attempt to destroy the book by burning it, but this proves impossible. They decide to research Sarah Bellows' life in the hope of determining the truth behind her death, her family history and in finding a solution. Meanwhile, a spider bite on Ruth's cheek begins to swell as a new story, 'The Red Spot' is written about her. When Ruth squeezes the affected area just before a College stage performance in which she is starring, the spot explodes and releases hundreds of tiny spiders. Ruth is saved by Stella, Ramon and Chuck, but is so traumatised by the experience that she is confined to a mental care facility.

The group's investigations take them to the local hospital, where they discover from archival records kept in the bowels of the place that Sarah's brother Ephraim performed electroshock therapy on her as a part of a cover-up operation. As the family's mill had been poisoning the town's water with mercury, killing several children, Sarah was used it appears as a scapegoat for the many deaths. At the hospital, Chuck is pursued by the 'Pale Lady' (Mark Steger), a phantom from his own recurring nightmares involving a red room. The Pale Lady eventually traps Chuck in a hallway lit with red light, approaching from every direction in which he turns until there is no escape, and absorbs him.

Police Chief Turner (Gil Bellows) arrests Stella and Ramon for trespassing when they are caught at the scene of Chuck's disappearance. Turner also learns that Ramon is a Vietnam War draft dodger. Later that night while Ramon and Stella are each locked up in an overnight cell, Turner reads Stella's book and discovers a new story, 'Me Tie Dough-ty Walker' freshly written. While Stella and Ramon try to warn him of the pending danger, Turner's dog begins to growl menacingly at the disused fire place as dust begins to emanate from it. Ramon realises that he is next, and that the next creature will be the 'Jangly Man', a monster from a campfire story that frightened him as a child. The dog whimpers away frightened when a severed head comes tumbling down the chimney to rest at Turner's feet. The partially decomposed head looks up at the Police Chief and grins, at which point he unloads his pistol in to it, but to no avail. In quick succession, two severed arms, a pair of legs and then the torso all come tumbling down the chimney. Within no time the severed limbs and head are all moving freely to reconnect with the torso. Standing upright and towering over the Police Chief, the Jangly Man (Troy James) dispenses with Turner before attempting to gain entry by squeezing through the bars of Ramon's cell.

Ramon and Stella are able to narrowly escape from their cells. Ramon lures the creature away with the aid of a Police car, while Stella goes back to the Bellows house to try to reason with the spirit of Sarah. Inside the house, Stella is taken back in time, leaving the book in the present day. She lives out part of Sarah's experience at the hands of her brother Ephraim (Will Carr) as he terrorises her and eventually drags her kicking and screaming into the dark room where she initially discovered the book on Halloween. There she encounters Sarah's ghost.

Back in the present, Ramon arrives at the house and finds the book with another story being written, this one titled 'The Haunted House'. He realises that they are both rapidly running out of time, and with the Jangly Man pursuing him now through the Bellows house, Ramon calls Stella's name and tells her to confront Sarah with what they know of the truth.

In the past once more, a frightened Stella begins tearfully reciting the truth behind Sarah Bellows horrifying story. She states that they now know she was victimised and tortured by her family for trying to reveal the truth, which turned her into a rage-filled monster, prompting Sarah to use the power of the book to kill her family. Stella promises to tell the real story of Sarah's life if she stops her killing, while providing an assurance that Sarah still has it within her to make the right decision and to do something good. Sarah tells Stella to write the truth in the book, in blood, which she begins to do, before she and the Jangly Man vanish. Back in the present day, Ramon, now willingly has accepted his draft into the US Army and is off to Vietnam. He shares an emotional goodbye with Stella before leaving. Stella, together with her father Roy (Dean Norris) and a now recovered Ruth, states her belief that she can still find a way to bring back Chuck and Auggie and that the answer lies somewhere in the pages of the book.

I sat in a reasonably busy movie theatre to watch 'Scary Stores to Tell in the Dark' amongst a group of mostly late teens and young adults which I guess is the target audience for this kind of genre offering. For me personally, the film didn't really deliver on the horror, or the scares for that matter, but it is a well crafted film nonetheless, with a suitable array of creative monster types that are realistic enough doubtless thanks to a large part to the involvement of Guillermo del Toro. The characters are also well realised and the production values are solid enough too. The story as a whole and the individual stories within the story move along at a good pace, raise the tension and the angst, and feed off our darkest innermost fears from our own childhoods when it was the done thing to tell creepy stories while sat around the camp fire on some outback school excursion. The ending however, when it comes is fairly lame, and paves the way for a sequel of course, which I'm not sure this story, or stories, necessarily warrant. A well enough realised film that would serve well as an introduction to the horror genre for early teens, and tweens.

'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential of five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-