![]() A rotting, shambling corpse comes to collect when one of the teens is framed for stealing said cadaver's big toe. Someone gets bitten by a spider, thus allowing "The Red Spot" to play out pretty much as you remember it. You won't care, though: the set pieces are dynamite, and all your favorite characters are here. The Pale Lady shows up. The narrative is, admittedly, mostly a delivery system for a series of set pieces built around a handful of stories you may or may not recall from Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Sarah's scary stories have a way of predicting the fates of those whose names appear within them, and it's not long before that haunted tome is sending one horrifying creature after another in pursuit of our new pals. The kids head inside, discover an old book filled with stories written by Bellows herself, and then.well, then the shit hits the fan. See, this family had a troubled history - a suicide, rumblings from the locals about "black magic", some questionable involvement with a local sanitarium - and the spirit of Sarah Bellows is said to haunt their long-abandoned home to this very day. That's not their real claim to fame, though. This is the Bellows House, home to a family whose paper mill basically put Mill Valley on the map. He and Stella hit it off almost immediately, and it doesn't take long before someone suggests visiting the legendarily haunted house on the edge of town. Seeking refuge inside a car at a drive-in movie theater (where Night of The Living Dead is screening, naturally), the crew crosses paths with another teen by the name of Ramon (Michael Garza). A charming trio of teenagers - bookworm Stella (Zoe Margaret Colleti), lovable dork Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and incorrigible smartass Chuck (Austin Zajur) - get together to celebrate Halloween, and in the process they manage to draw the ire of the town's local bully, Tommy (Austin Abrams). ![]() Øvredal's film is set in Mill Valley, PA, 1968. I am pleased to report that this prediction was not only accurate, but actually undersold the reality: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark goes way harder than I expected it to, and the result is not only one of the best horror movies of the year, but also one of the best kids' horror movies, period. Heading into André Øvredal's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, my prediction was that he, executive producer Guillermo del Toro and screenwriters Dan and Kevin Hageman had probably cooked up something that would feel a lot like Goosebumps, though perhaps just a bit gnarlier.
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