Lemme preface this whole thing by saying that I recognize I am not the target audience for this film. The target audience is one of two people: adults who grew up with these books, for whom this was their gateway horror stories or t(w)eens who have yet to experience a horror movie and form whom this will be their gateway horror story. I am neither. I am very experienced in horror and want my films to be as gory and scary and terrifying as possible. What I was really in it for were the creatures. With Guillermo del Toro producing, I knew they’d have tremendous love and care behind them, and I stumbled on a video on Twitter (I think that one’s it) showing their creation and I was excited to see them in action. Except it turns out, they don’t get that much action.
Some kids investigate a creepy old house that’s haunted by a ghost who’s known to tell you stories–the last stories you’ll ever hear. Because kids in horror movies are stupid, one of them steals the ghost’s book of stories. Now new stories are appearing and these kids are disappearing. Spooky, scary?
Again, I was in it for the creatures, but most of them get fairly minimal screen time, which was a bummer. It was especially a bummer because the rest of the film was kinda boring. It’s kinda understandable how cliche and predicable this film was (again, it gets a bit of a pass as a “gateway horror drug”) but I just could not care any less about these kids. There was nothing particularly interesting about them, and nothing particularly unique about how they were handling their situation.
I shoulda stayed home and just finished my Salute Your Shorts binge
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark – \m/ \m/