Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

SPOILER ALERT: DON’T READ BOOKS!! ESPECIALLY THE KIND YOU FIND AT A HAUNTED HOUSE.

With the influx of horror films in 2019, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is just another addition to the ever-expanding horror genre. At its core, it is a tale of how deceit and corruption can become an evil omnipresent ghost that can’t let go until dealt with, but like all movies takes a few questionable detours towards its final message.

Based on the book series of the same name, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark takes the childish aspects of Alvin Schwartz’s original books and elevates them, not by much, to appeal to the PG-13 audiences it is intended for. Many images from the books also show up in the movie to be reminiscent of the short stories that inspired it.

Scary Stories in itself is a period piece. Taking place in 1968, the film doesn’t disappoint in the blatant mentions of Nixon and the Vietnam War. Set in the rural small town of Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, the film centers around the teenagers of the town, stereotypically the Jock, the Outcasts, and the one token minority character. The group of outcasts is comprised of emo writer type Stella (Zoe Colletti), nerd Auggie (Gabriel Rush), and class clown Chuck (Austin Zajur). In the slow first act, they plan to get revenge on Tommy (Austin Abrams) the local varsity bully that every film set in high school seems to have. Their prank backfires when they are chased by Tommy and his gang to a local drive-in, where they meet a stranger named Ramón (Michael Garza) and hide in his car. Stella and Ramón instantly have chemistry.

Because it is Halloween, the teens decide to go to the haunted Bellows house. They tell Ramón the story of Sarah Bellows. Sarah was locked away by her family and would tell stories to kids through the wall of her room, where she killed them before hanging herself with her own hair. Breaking into the house, Ramón and Stella find Sarah’s hidden room. Chuck for some reason has a vision of an old woman and a dog in a red room. Scared out of his mind, he and Auggie run downstairs to find Ramón and Stella, who had found a book labelled as belonging to Sarah Bellows, her book of stories. Suddenly, the candles they lit go out, and the secret door is locked. Tommy, who had followed them to the house, traps them, while his date, Chuck’s sister Ruth (Natalie Ganzhorn), pleads for him to release them. He pretends to just to push Ruth into the room and locks them all in there. A shadow unlocks the door and lets them out, while Stella steals the book from the house. Tommy had trashed Ramón’s car, prompting Stella to invite him to spend the night in her basement.

While reading the book, Stella stumbles upon a story she didn’t see before labeled “Harold” that seems to have been freshly written in blood. The story is about Tommy becoming a scarecrow in his family’s corn maze. Sure enough, Tommy is missing from school the next day, prompting Stella to think that Sarah killed him. Auggie denies this and says that Tommy is just playing hookie. Stella and Ramón go to the corn maze and find a scarecrow dressed in Tommy’s letterman jacket, confirming Stella’s suspicions. Stella brings the book back to the Bellows house, but it soon appears back in her bookshelf. They open the book again to find it writing itself, this time a story about Auggie. They call him over a handheld radio, but he ignores their pleas until it’s too late. When Stella and Ramón get to Auggie’s house, the only sign of him are drag marks under the bed, as he was dragged away by a corpse.

The next day they tell Chuck and Ruth, the only two other people who were in the house, about what is happening. Ruth doesn’t believe a word of it, whereas Chuck is angered and ready to stop the evil. They go investigate the Bellows, finding that Sarah’s previous stories were all about her family, and they all seemed to just disappear. A new story starts writing, and it’s about Ruth, who is about to go on stage at the school’s musical. A spider bite on her face keeps swelling up and out pop a whole bunch of spiders. Luckily, the gang saves her in time. They then go further in their search, leading them to a mental hospital where Sarah was tortured. Chuck protests against going into the R.E.D. room, where the records are kept, due to his vision. As Stella and Ramón listen to a recording, Sarah starts to speak a story about Chuck. Chuck is then absorbed by a blob person, leading him to disappear. The only two left are Ramón and Stella, who are arrested. Stella learns that Ramón is a draft dodger right before his monster comes, a creature called the Jangly Man. They escape its clutches and go to the Bellows house, where Stella is transported back in time and miraged into Sarah, showing how Sarah’s family locked her away because she knew they poisoned the water with mercury. To save herself and Ramón, Stella makes a deal with Sarah to tell her story in return for stopping the killing. Stella fulfills her promise to the ghost and goes on to search for a way to bring her friends back.