Y'all, I am sad to report that Andre Ovredal's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, based on the beloved books by Alvin Schwartz is boorrrrrrring.
Now. This may just be because I am a horror veteran who has an *extremely* high tolerance for spookiness. But I don't think that's it. It may be that this film is a mere PG-13, but I don't think that's it either, because Insidious, one of the scariest movies of all time is PG-13 too. I just think SSTTITD is not a good movie.
SSTTITD takes place in 1968. On Halloween, horror fan Stella, her friends Auggie and Chuck, and drifter Ramon break into a "haunted" house that belonged to the Bellows' family. The family was infamous for supposedly locking away their daughter, Sarah, who liked to write scary stories. Stella discovers Sarah's hand-written book of scary stories and takes it with her.
After reading a story written about the town bully, Tommy, and realizing it coincides with Tommy's real-life disappearance (the story in question is "Harold", which fans of the book will recognize as the story with the killer scarecrow), Stella figures out that Sarah is still writing stories from beyond the grave that actually result in people's deaths. This is confirmed when her friend Auggie falls prey to a story in which a corpse is looking for his missing toe (which Auggie has accidentally eaten in a stew).
From there, Stella and Ramon try to figure out exactly how to get Sarah to stop killing from beyond the grave. The movie is a slog that I barely have the patience to explain. Fans of the books will recognize one of the most iconic images from Alvin Schwartz's books during the sequence where Chuck is hunted down by an obese, pale, stringy-haired ghoul in "The Dream"--one of the only truly scary scenes in the entire film.
The film comes to...a conclusion. Stella is able to confront Sarah and convince her to stop writing her stories, But Auggie and Chuck remain missing, which sucks because neither character did anything to deserve their fate (unlike the bully Tommy). So, a scary movie with a central theme of justice doesn't actually...give our characters justice in the end. What a waste.
While Alvin Schwartz's books remain absolutely iconic, especially with the original illustrations by Stephen Gammell, the movie based on these books is aggressively mediocre. There's no way around it: save your money and buy a copy of the original books, which are still sure to give you a tingle and raise the hairs on your neck.
Grade: D
