Download Film Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark
Keiko Bludworth
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, those freaky old books with the terrifying monochrome illustrations you probably read as a kid, has gotten the big-budget movie adaptation. To get right down to it: Is it good? No. As a movie, it's fundamentally a mess that neither works as a standalone film nor as an anthology of the several adapted titular scary stories. It's a project that wants to have its cake and eat it too, weaving together a coming-of-age story about some misfit teens in the vein of IT or Stranger Things with some short-form horror to break things up. Neither succeeds and then at the end of it all the film has the gall to set up an entire franchise? No more of these, thanks so much.
Probably. There are a good half-dozen jump scares, the most effective coming during the film's foray into one of the more classic original stories, "The Big Toe." But this isn't one of those film's that tries to "get" you every fifteen seconds.
When Stella is flipping through Sarah's book, we see several other stories from the original books that weren't featured in the movie. These include "The Wendigo," about a man who mysteriously disappears in the woods, "Strangers," about a man who meets a ghost on a train, "The Cat's Paw," involving a woman who turns into a cat and loses her foot, and "The Attic," in which a man is trying to find his missing dog in his own attic, opens the door, and screams because he steps on a nail.
Based on the classic series of books of the same name by Alvin Schwartz, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark centers on a group of unsuspecting teens who encounter the book of Sarah Bellows, which unleashes untold horrors into their lives. While the film eventually resolved its conflict with the spirit of Sarah, the story still left more to be explored, with several key characters still missing in an unknown realm. Any additional details on the upcoming sequel will remain under wraps, but the story will likely focus on Stella, played by Zoe Colletti, attempting to use the book to get them back while also adapting more of the iconic tales from the original series. Until then, fans can revisit their favorite stories with the first film, which is available to own on Blu-ray and digital.
Sarah Bellows is the main antagonist of the 2019 film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, based on the book of the same name. She was locked away by her family, blamed for crimes she didn't commit, and ultimately became an enraged spirit seeking to murder her family for what they had done to her. She later vents her fury on Stella Nicholls and her friends after Stella takes her book from the Bellows house.
Sarah Bellows was the third child born to Delanie and Deodat Bellows, the younger sister to Ephraim and Harold, and the granddaughter of Gertrude Bellows. She was the only one of the Bellows children to be born with albinism, leading to her family locking her away in a small hidden room in the basement. Sarah spent her days writing and telling scary stories through the wall to the local children who came to visit her.
By the beginning of the film, in 1968, seventy years after her passing, Sarah had become a myth in Mill Valley. The local legend, with variations, given Chuck's remark, "There's no book in the version of the myth I heard," states that Sarah spent her dats telling scary stories to the local children, and that she began poisoning them for unknown reasons, resulting in an unknown number of deaths. A mob hadd purportedly formed in anger, but before they could do anything, Sarah had hanged herself "with her own hair". It was also said that anyone who entered the Bellows house at night and said "Sarah Bellows, tell me a story." would die shortly after.
Her room is discovered by Stella Nicholls and her friends after escaping the local bully, Tommy Milner. Stella finds Sarah's book of scary stories on the bookshelf, and while Chuck insists that Stella put it back, she instead takes it with her before they leave the house, uttering the words, "Sarah Bellows, tell me a story," effectively waking Sarah's enraged spirit.
With the name Deodat sounding familiar, Stella realizes that all the Bellows had not simply left Mill Valley, as the town had originally thought. They all had stories in Sarah's book, having been killed by her seventy years earlier. Their research is cut short as Sarah begins writing Ruth's story, "The Red Spot", and the kids rush to save her.
The shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large in the small town of Mill Valley for generations. It's in a mansion that young Sarah Bellows turns her tortured life and horrible secrets into a series of scary stories. These terrifying tales soon have a way of becoming all too real for a group of unsuspecting teens who stumble upon Sarah's spooky home.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark follows Stella (Zoe Collenti), who visits a haunted house with her friends on Halloween night and discovers a book of horror stories written in blood. The stories start coming true for Stella and her friends.
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark eschews a lot of easy horror tropes while recreating its well-trodden tales of terror. There's no waves of blood or piles of corpses. Although it can occasionally lean too far into jump scares, the creatures that make up the stories are all imaginative, unique and above all else -- scary. While they manage to dispatch many people, it's usually in new and surprising ways that make them stand out even more than before.
Harold is introduced early in the film, initially nothing more than just a scarecrow. The scarecrow rests within the cornfields of Tommy Milner's (Austin Abrams) family farm. Tommy repeatedly beats it with a bat early in the film, clearly not a fan of the raggedy old thing. It's brought up that Tommy's never much liked the grotesque-looking scarecrow. That's partly what makes his ultimate fate at the hands of Harold so frightening. When Sarah Bellows's book begins writing new stories, the first one is about Tommy.
Chuck (Austin Zajur) spends most of Scary Tales To Tell In The Dark terrified of what's going to come for him. When he was first in the Bellows house, he saw a red room with an old woman inside. After Auggie (Gabriel Rush) is dragged into the darkness and Ruthie has her episode with the spiders, Chuck becomes especially worried about what waits for him in a "red room." Because of this, he elects to stay behind while Stella and Ramón (Michael Garza) go into the records room, which happens to be titled the "RED Room".
The Jangly Man is the last major threat that targets Stella and Ramón, but it also might be the most frightening creature in the entire film. The Jangly Man can come in multiple pieces, initially only appearing as a head that comes down a chimney. But even when the body parts are strewn about, they're independent. They can also fuse back into a single body. This allows the Jangly Man incredible durability (how can you put it down once and for all if it can just reform?) and strange flexibility. It can squeeze through almost any opening, laughing the entire way.
Probably. There are a good half-dozen jump scares, the most effective coming during the film's foray into one of the more classic original stories, "The Big Toe." But this isn't one of those film's that tries to "get" you every fifteen seconds.
The question about whether I could talk about Uzumaki in an article about anthology horror was interesting. Is it anthology horror? On the one hand, each chapter can stand on its own. On the other, it ultimately uses this web of narratives to tell a single story. Then again, you could make the same argument about horror anthology film Ghost Stories. Is the presence of a frame narrative enough to remove the label of anthology from something? What about narratives that use recurring characters, like American Horror Story? How is an anthology different from a television show with multiple seasons?
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