Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (2019) - Movie Review

When it comes to genre films (AKA the stuff that the Oscars consistently overlooks), one of the most common retorts is to put down its status as fiction. Or, more accurately, its place as fiction that takes a further suspension of disbelief than others. It can be about ghosts, ghouls, robotic zombies, time travel, Danny Huston playing a character that you don’t want to punch in the face; some things are just too much for others to buy into.

And even as someone who leans in hard when it comes to speculative fiction, to an extent, I get that mentality. But what that tends to leave out is the notion that stories like that, even the most fantastical, are influenced by reality. Sometimes, fiction is the only way to externalise very real, very dark, very serious thoughts and feelings. And it is here where this film shines.

Adapted from a series of short stories by Alvin Schwartz, which stirred up some moral panic back in the day for just how confronting they got, the framework to tie them together here is similar to Goosebumps: A collection of stories that, once read, imprint themselves on the real world. This metatextual approach is already to going to win points from me, as I have a real love for stories about storytelling, and the presentation here only adds to that.

Using its Halloween setting to its fullest, this is just the right kind of scary for the season. It’s the fun kind of scary, the stuff you actively want to seek out for a good jump without having it drag into the heavy shit. While it tends to favour jump scares, it’s balanced with a genuinely creepy atmosphere that hangs over what we’re shown. The mixture of practical effects and CGI results in some very effective realisations of the monsters in the stories, and despite the relatively low content rating, the showings of gore can get really damn gross.

But with that said, describing this as Halloween horror feels a bit disingenuous. It certainly starts out that way, and that’s where the visual aesthetic lingers, but after a while, the Halloween candy coating wears off and what we’re given is something… far less fantastical. For every monster we see, and every nightmarish scenario we’re offered, there is a tangible reality that informs it. A jigsaw Jangly Man becomes the personification of what war does to people, a lost child writing stories about everyone she knows becomes a form of artistic revenge for what was done to her, and a bad dream becomes a horrifying reality.

The setting is a major aspect of this, taking place in 1968, on the cusp of Nixon’s election into office and during the US’ controversial involvement in the Vietnam War. With how shellshock and fear of what they’re doing to their children wraps around the narrative, right down to the harrowing revelation of who the writer Sarah Bellows truly is, it reinforces the film’s main point about how society is affected by the stories it tells itself. You compress enough fear and dread for long enough and it will come out in one form or another, whether it’s in the actions of the real world, like how Michael Garza’s Ramón is treated for both his ethnicity and his connection to the war effort, or in the structure of fiction, like how Sarah’s stories end up painting the reality of the main characters.

It may not completely stick the landing on what it sets out to do, as the Vietnam subtext unravels a bit during the final reel, but as a scary story all about the power of scary stories, it’s a highly enjoyable experience and it shows Guillermo Del Toro’s knack for backing the right productions is definitely intact. And if the sequel bait ending gets cashed in on, I’m definitely curious to see where they go from here.