Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 1, 2019

Sometimes you just have to love Wikipedia, even if you understandably continue to hate it. I frankly wasn’t that aware of the book series which spawned Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and in reading Wikipedia’s article on said series, had a rather hearty laugh when “acknowledged” influences on author Arthur Schwartz included everyone from Shakespeare to Bennett Cerf. Some of the supplements on this release get into the perceived “danger” the books supposedly presented to younger readers, dangers that included rather graphic and, well, scary illustrations accompanying stories that Schwartz at least at times adapted from folklore and urban legends. Kind of surprisingly, it seems like some of this controversy has contributed to the original books being among the “most requested” to be banned by various concerned parents’ groups, and my hunch is those same groups will no doubt be keeping their kids far, far away from this film adaptation. In a way, that’s kind of a shame, because Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark has some interesting things to say not just about the printed word, but about a number of issues that teens may face, including peer pressure and the harmful effects of vicious gossip. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark may not completely succeed, and my hunch is fans of the original books may be wishing that more of Schwartz’s creations made it into this tale, but the effort to weave several of Schwartz’s stories into an organic whole is often surprisingly creepy.

Part of the disconnect fans of Schwartz’s work may feel between the source books and this film will probably be due to the kind of odd decision to place events in 1968. Co-producer and general “inspiration spark” Guillermo del Toro is on hand in one of the supplements mentioning how this era was chosen at least in part since it was pre-internet, when the printed word held more sway over young minds, but the film’s emphasis on supposedly relevant items like the Vietnam War, the unraveling of the Johnson Administration and subsequent presidential election of Richard M. Nixon may seem tangential at best and completely irrelevant at worst. And in fact one of the first images the film offers (after a view of a bunch of Nixon posters covered with scrawls of swastikas, oddly enough) is of a football jock and resident high school bully named Tommy Milner (Austin Abrams) excitedly sharing the news with his buddies that he's signed up for duty in Nam. It's kind of unsettling from any number of angles, not the least of which is an assumption that very few if any young men were thrilled to be fighting in that war by the time 1968 rolled around.

The main characters turn out to only have tangential connection to Tommy, if indeed they have a connection at all. Director André Øvredal does a nice job of introducing two of them in conjunction (more or less) with Tommy, including a strange newcomer to a town called Mill Valley named Ramon (Michael Garza) and a "native" named Stella Nicholls (Zoe Colletti). Stella actually bikes right by Ramon in his car as the film is getting underway, but it takes a few intervening plot developments to get them together. Those developments include a Halloween escapade on the part of Stella and her nerdy friends Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur), which in fact is a revenge scheme against Tommy, who has evidently been partaking in whatever the Halloween version of stealing a geek's lunch money is for years. That leads to some semi-disastrous results, which finally gets the film to what is its essence: a long hidden book by a mysterious former townswoman named Sarah Bellows (Kathleen Pollard) which does in fact contain all sorts of scary stories.

The fact that Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark actually takes a considerable amount of time before the central "McGuffin" is introduced may strike some as overly labored, but I found it rather refreshing in that it gave some breathing room for characters to be introduced and developed, which in turn strengthened the emotional connection to those characters. Therefore, when bad things start happening after Stella takes the book and kids start disappearing right and left, the film actually has more of a sense of shock and even tragedy than it might have had it simply "gone for the gusto" from the get go in terms of providing a traditional horror film fright fest.

The stories from Sarah’s book which come magically to life are culled from Schwartz’s original works, of course, and my hunch is those who grew up with the Schwartz tome may be less inclined to view how they’re shoehorned into the overall tale this film is attempting to tell than will more casual viewers (of which I am most likely one). The “scary stories” basically “reach out and touch” a number of kids, with some of Stella’s “crew” falling victim, and Stella herself obviously a target. There's a somewhat inconsistent emphasis that the kids are being visited by their own nightmares, in what seems derivative and frankly unnecessary. Stella and Ramon end up being the focal “detectives” trying to figure out the mysteries of Sarah’s past, which in turn might help to elucidate what’s going on with her frightening book, but there are arguably a few too many subplots stuffed into the proceedings, including Stella’s troubled history at home and a really silly plot development concerning Ramon that ties in once again to the whole 1968 Vietnam Era underpinning.

If the film's central mystery is never really adequately explained, and if in fact some explanations make absolutely no sense (electroconvulsive shock therapy for supposed mental illness is referred to in what seems to be a late 19th or early 20th century context, when it wasn't actually used until the 1930s), the film still develops a palpable mood of angst which is very much in tune with a number of other del Toro properties that feature kids in distress up against paranormal phenomena they probably aren't extremely well equipped to be able to handle.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Scary Stories in the Dark is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and CBS Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists a couple of Arri Alexa models as having been used, but omits at what resolution the DI was finished (I'm assuming 2K). This is a very appealing looking transfer that boasts very good to excellent fine detail throughout, even in some rather dimly lit or downright dark scenes. The stylized palette tends to be on the appropriately autumnal, cool side of things until paranormal phenomena start cropping up in the Bellows mansion, at which point things become very well saturated and rather warm looking, with an emphasis on deep reds and oranges. Since a lot of the monsters were achieved with prosthetics and other practical effects rather than a surplus of CGI (though CGI was evidently added to help things along in some cases, as with the scarecrow and, later, Jangly Man), that actually helps to elevate fine detail levels, since textures on various beasts are clearly evident. The grading in the film is rather interesting, with a prevalence of kind of blue-green tones that aren't exactly teal (they arguably appear a bit more in the teal range in the 4K UHD presentation) but are rather distinctive looking a lot of the time. Other more obvious moments include a big "red room" sequence with Chuck where the entire frame is bathed in that tone, though detail levels again manage to peek through quite effectively, especially with regard to the Pale Lady, the monster in that scene.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark features an intermittently robust Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, one that exploits expected startle effects, with sudden bursts of LFE and the like, but which actually gets some of its best surround activity in some more relatively less "showy" ways, including the outdoor material on Halloween or even the cavernous room that the kids discover in the Bellows mansion where Sarah Bellows was kept imprisoned. There are a number of well done sound effects scattered through this presentation, many of which are either placed discretely in side channels or, as exemplified by the shriek Sarah emits at the climax of the film, nicely waft through several channels. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this problem free track.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Dark Tales (1080p; 5:08) offers Guillermo del Toro talking about the Schwartz books and this adaptation.


• Retro Horror (1080p; 5:06) offers a number of talking heads discussing formative horror experiences.


• The Bellows Construct (1080p; 3:36) addresses aspects of production design vis a vis the central location of much of the film.


• Creatures from the Shadows (1080p; 11:35) is an interesting piece documenting the crafting of the practical monster effects in the film.


• Mood Reels (1080p; 24:27) offers weekly "recaps" that André Øvredal assembled during the shoot which have unused trims (some without audio) and behind the scenes footage.


• Behind the Scenes: Set Visits (1080p; 4:50) offers more candid footage.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kind of hilariously one day for really no reason I asked our Alexa to play the great old Theme from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and "she" (because I refer to Alexa as a female) started a "station" based on that request instead, a station which started out by playing "Mill Valley", the bouncy but virtually spy free song done by Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point Third Grade Class. There's a completely different kind of Mill Valley on hand in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, but I can still kind of curmudgeonly insist that nothing is quite as frightening as that bizarre pop song from two years after this film takes place (I'm joking, it's kind of a sweet song). That said, for those who don't want to revisit the horror of 1970 AM radio may find a chill or two in this generally appealing adaptation, one that is obviously keeping its options open for sequels. Technical merits are solid, the supplementary package quite enjoyable, and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark comes Recommended.