Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
2019 · Directed by André Øvredal
Original language: English
- horror
- mystery
The story
Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, Halloween night, 1968. After playing a joke on a school bully, Stella and her friends decide to sneak into a supposedly haunted house that once belonged to the powerful Bellows family, unleashing dark forces that they will be unable to control.
What it’s like
Cold autumn light and dusk-blue shadows give way to warm practical lamplight inside a small-town 1968 Pennsylvania, all sodium-orange streetlamps, crisp leaves and a sprawling, cobwebbed farmhouse that feels like a stage set for the old tales. The camera stays mostly steady and composed, lingering on cramped bedrooms, school corridors and fields of unnerving scarecrows, while the score leans on eerie strings and sudden stings that land harder than the images themselves. The look is storybook-creepy rather than grimy: wooden floors, flashlight beams, fog over corn. Its vibe is spooky-nostalgic with a playful edge, the sort of October night watch you'd pick for a Halloween evening with friends or a cozy rainy weekend under a blanket. The pacing is brisk and episodic, building through jump-scare set pieces toward a climax that turns on loyalty and courage among a group of teenagers, with the adults' buried cruelties sitting beneath the frights. Intensity is moderate: frequent jolting scares, grotesque creature design and some gore, plus ugly bullying and period racism, but little sustained brutality. It suits viewers who want atmospheric, accessible horror with a nostalgic friendship core, rather than bleak or extreme dread.
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