Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

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