SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (15)
D: Andre Øvredal
Lionsgate/Entertainment One/CBS/1212/Double Dare You
(Guillermo Del Toro, J. Miles Dale, Sean Daniel, Jason F. Brown & Elizabeth Grave)
US/Canada 2019
108 mins
Horror/Fantasy
W: Dan Hageman & Kevin Hageman [based on the stories by
Alvin Schwartz]
DP: Roman Osin
Ed: Patrick Larsgaard
Mus: Marco Beltrami
Zoe Colletti (Stella Nicholls), Michael Garza (Ramon Morales),
Gabriel Rush (Auggie Hilderbrandt), Austin Zajur (Chuck Steinberg), Dean Norris (Tommy Milner)
Guillermo Del Toro may only have served as producer on this
chilling gothic fairytale, but his trademark style is all over it.
Set in a small town, a group of school friends discover a
dusty old book in a derelict haunted house and the cursed book begins to write the group's grizzly fates.
For the target audience of adolescents, I think this is a fine
little chiller, owing a bit of a debt to Stephen King with its set-up and characterisation.
The young cast are all good, and it is generally entertaining
throughout, but it's probably aimed itself at too niche a market & probably won't have too much appeal for those outside of it.
6/10