It’s a depth that’s missing from the short stories, but the simplicity of the original text, in turn, makes them more effective horror.Īrguably, that’s not the ultimate intention, as the movie’s target audience (if I had to guess) seems to be young adults and those just getting into horror, but that mildness still feels like a letdown. The film, which is set in 1968, uses the Vietnam War and the presidential election as its backing, and turns the scary stories into a way of addressing how adults fail children, and the way mistakes repeat themselves throughout history. It’s in these details that the pros and cons of Scary Stories’ original medium become clear. Ramón, who resembles a young Gregory Peck, is dealing not only with the haunts but with racist harassment from the local bullies. The horror nerd is no longer a side character - Stella is front and center, with Vincent Price posters all over her walls and an encyclopedic knowledge of Night of the Walking Dead. It’s also notable that the archetypes that Stella and Ramón embody have been updated. They all fall into archetypes, sure, but play them with such charm that it hardly matters. Colletti is terrific, as are Zajur, Rush, Garza, and Natalie Ganzhorn, as Chuck’s sister Ruth. The pale lady aside, the best thing about the film is its cast. Fascinated by all things scary, Stella takes Sarah’s book of stories from the house, only to discover that, every night, a new story begins to write itself - containing the names of the people around her. Anyone who heard her tales, however, swiftly died, leading to the townspeople demanding her execution. Local legend has it that Sarah, now long dead, had been kept hidden away by her family, and told scary stories to the local children through the wall of her bedroom. The haunting begins when horror buff Stella (Zoe Colletti) and her friends, joker Chuck (Austin Zajur), pedant Auggie (Gabriel Rush), and dreamy newcomer Ramón (Michael Garza), find themselves in a haunted house. The short stories are, with middling effectiveness, tied together as stories begin written by the vengeful ghost of Sarah Bellows (Kathleen Pollard) to dispatch the inhabitants of Mill Valley shortly after the Halloween of 1968. (I haven’t … yet.) Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t quite live up to that one scare, but it still feels like an accomplishment that anyone could come close to capturing the bone-deep horror of these illustrations. She’s just as petrifying in motion, to the point that I worried I would have nightmares.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |