Scary Stories to tell in the dark: STRANGER STRINGS - 5/10

Despite being attached to big biz barons of barbarity, Ovredal and Del Toro’s adaptational vision of Alvin Schwarz’s eponymous stories is one betrothed to fidelity but divorced from ideation. Shot-gunning the contemporaneous horror cycle that can only be defined as nostalgic retromania (patent pending), ‘Scary Movies’ attempts to attach itself to the likes of Stranger Things and IT in the meld of ‘Eerie Indiana meets Goosebumps meets Tales from the Crypt meets Joe Dante’. The retro-references are as intumescent as the film’s affirmation for tropes; as much as the film’s target demographic bewilders. The classification for the film is mindbogglingly incoherent, just is the assertion that the film can be considered an anthology feature. Not to demean Del Toro or Ovredal - whose signatory stylistics manage a teeter above the tropes (Del Toro’s phantasmic colour palette and Ovredal’s fascination with folklorish myths) but the film is stifled by convolution regarding its market for response abetted by its inability to rival the (many) strengths of Stranger Things. 

Closely knit with Schwarz’s compendiums, ‘Scary Stories’ teleports ts audience back to the Nam-stricken America of 1968, awash with ‘Tricky’ (Nixon) politics and adolescent underlings sitting solemnly in their cars. Once upon a time…in 1968…on Halloween…some scare-wearing teens decide to break into a decrepid abode and rifle through the owners belongings. Upon such warrantless search, said Scoobies (younger Scooby-Doo-ers) steal an accursed book that magically renders nightmarish stories upon its pages…and they come true. And people die/go insane/go AWOL (not discover the chamber of secrets). As people inevitably die, the kids have to figure it all out in 107 minutes or the audience get their money back (this does not affect statutory rights).  

Suffice to denote the film as Scooby Doo does horror, ‘Scary Movies’ has its moments; the odd pubescent jump-scare, the materialisation of the leprosy laden contortionist aka ‘The Gangly man’ and a vibrantly vintage  cinematography. It is, pertinently, not just a mediocre horror flick for kids - save from an ill-fitting cervical snap - but a mediocre horror flick for kids…not yet old enough to see it. The liminality of reception aside, ‘Scary Stories’ is an unscary story that acts as a beginners guide to horror for teens and tweens alike. Retro-futrism may prove interesting; cinematic regression is not. And yet, the appetite for IT2 is now unequivocally whet.

a f-anthological feature that  scuppers a sporadic scare, BUT A demographic disaster.  should’ve been…stranger. OVREDAL ; FROM TROLL TO DROLE.

Yes! Let's all do the Jangly! One two three! https://t.co/Duy76ocYdt

— Andre Ovredal (@Filmtroll) August 13, 2019