Like many 80's kids, I grew up with these books, which hold a special place in my heart. I should have listened to my heart when it told me that this film should never have been made, so I only have myself to blame for eschewing my intuition out of false hope.
I am speechless at how bad this film is. The original books left so much to the imagination, but this film version has none and leaves no room for audiences to use theirs. Yes, I know it's a "PG-13 horror film", which has become a red-flag for horror fans. All the same, there are countless PG and PG-13 horror films that are far scarier and outshine this wretched mess on every conceivable level: "Get Out," 2002's "Mothman Prophecies," and "Dark Skies" come to mind if we are citing more current films. Check out Disney's 'Watcher in the Woods', "Tourist Trap", "Jaws" and Return to OZ from 1985 if we are talking old school.
Technically, 'Scary Stories' is perfectly average. The musical score is recycled from every modern film of its type, the cinematography stale, and the special effects out of place, as they undermine the books' old-fashioned sensibilities. Director André Øvredal claims that the film consists of almost all practical effects with a mere 10% CGI for "enhancement." You could have fooled me because nothing in this film feels "practical" in any way, shape, or form. This is anti-cinematic, contemporary fantasy (Guillermo's fingerprints are all over the film in the same way Spielberg's were on Poltergeist).
Speaking of old-fashioned sensibilities-and this is my biggest bone of contention-the film's depiction of small-town America, especially 60's America, is ridiculously hollow and inauthentic (the director is Norwegian and born in the '70s, which may explain it). Every authority figure and adult character is an unlikable stereotype, each lacking the warmth and innocence you would find in a small town during that period. The main teen characters are all stock, lacking any semblance of charisma or nuance, and speak in distractingly modern-day colloquialisms. These are kids of today that act and talk like kids of today. And, of course, political correctness underscores the whole atrocity.
The film's ultimate misstep is creating a completely unnecessary narrative thread designed to link all disparate stories. This adds absolutely nothing to the proceedings and results in the majority of the main characters spending half the film's running time reading aloud from books "searching for the answers" to help them destroy whatever is-never mind, it doesn't matter. If this were a mystery, that would be one thing -but it's a film based on one to two-page stories meant to scare the pants off kids. Alas, this adaptation feels very compromised, more concerned with pandering to fans of "Stranger Things" and the "It" crowd than recreating the magic of its source material.
I sincerely hope the filmmakers of "More Scary Stories," which will inevitably happen, decide to take a more old-fashioned route and stick to the essence of what made the original books so eerily memorable.
