Pelish at the Movies – ‘Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark’
~By Randy Pelish~
Produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by André Øvredal, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is a delightful Halloween treat. Shot on location in Ontario, Canada, this is a very clever horror film indeed.
Set in the brutal year of 1968 in small town, blue collar Pennsylvania, the story involves a group of teens caught up in a horror story that turns out to be all too real.
A local haunted house, where a young girl Sarah was hospitalized with insanity in 1868, is the scene of reported sightings of her ghost. Sarah who cannot rest in peace has haunted the house and surrounding town for a hundred years. The young people find a book of Sarah’s stories and take it with them. Sarah, very unhappy about that, starts writing new stories written in blood about the teens. They took her book, and she makes them pay one by one with their lives.
The resolution of these young people’s new stories is an awful lot of fun. Camera work and production values, recreating small town America half a century ago, are A-plus. Special effects are marvelous, too. At one hour and 47 minutes, the creators have told their tale in a relatively sparse way, also a very scary way. You will find the young cast uniformly entertaining.
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is currently playing in theaters throughout the Reno area.
