I grew up with the Scary Stories books and my older brothers would scare me with them every chance they got. Needless to say, they were a big part of my childhood and I was thrilled to see them finally come to life on screen. The good news is - the creature designs seem to have been done with minimal CGI and they are as unnerving and uncanny as the ones in those infamous illustrations we all grew up with. The bad news is - they're attached to a somewhat meandering and un-engaging wrap around story that gives its characters a personality a little too late.
Three young kids and one random drifter break into the abandoned home of a suspected child killer on Halloween, find one of her rumored scary stories books, and fairly soon after that, new stories begin to form in the book as bizarre creatures come to claim new victims.
It's not a bad idea to use as a springboard for all these creepy creations to show up, but the main characters don't give us much to hang on to and the film feels like it takes a bit too long to get to the good stuff and, once it does, we wait in anticipation for the next story to appear in between tedious scenes of the kids sleuthing in the local library or mental hospital to find clues about how to stop the evil from claiming them.
There's lip service to issues of believing victims, money having the ability to bury wrongdoings, war violence, corrupt politicians, and people of color being thought of us bringers of black magic, but it doesn't say much profound about any of those and just feels like window dressing to make the film seem like it's more relevant than it really is.
Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark is still pretty decent as PG-13 horror goes. It has enough imaginative creature designs and sharp ideas to write it off completely.
Three young kids and one random drifter break into the abandoned home of a suspected child killer on Halloween, find one of her rumored scary stories books, and fairly soon after that, new stories begin to form in the book as bizarre creatures come to claim new victims.
It's not a bad idea to use as a springboard for all these creepy creations to show up, but the main characters don't give us much to hang on to and the film feels like it takes a bit too long to get to the good stuff and, once it does, we wait in anticipation for the next story to appear in between tedious scenes of the kids sleuthing in the local library or mental hospital to find clues about how to stop the evil from claiming them.
There's lip service to issues of believing victims, money having the ability to bury wrongdoings, war violence, corrupt politicians, and people of color being thought of us bringers of black magic, but it doesn't say much profound about any of those and just feels like window dressing to make the film seem like it's more relevant than it really is.
Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark is still pretty decent as PG-13 horror goes. It has enough imaginative creature designs and sharp ideas to write it off completely.