What did you think of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark? The film, directed by André Øvredal and produced by Guillermo del Toro, attempted to create PG-13 horror that appealed to both adults and the younger crowd. That’s easier said than done because teen and adult audiences want vastly different things in their scary movies. A lot of mature viewers hate watching something they consider “kiddie horror”.
But Scary Stories was pretty good! It wasn’t as terrifying as it could have been and the plot was a bit generic and plain but it was well-directed and had some great atmosphere and some wonderful horror sequences (including the one pictured above). All in all, not bad for a PG-13 fright flick.
Now we are learning that Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is getting a sequel, hopefully titled Scary Stories 2: Still Scarin’. The sequel will once again be directed by Øvredal and once again produced by del Toro, who will also write the screen story for the sequel. The movie will be written by Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman, who penned the first picture. The whole spooky gang is getting back together. But hopefully that creepy scarecrow Harold doesn’t make a return. Screw Harold!
There is still quite a lot of content to mine from the source material. The Scary Stories books by Alvin Schwartz consisted of three volumes, all containing horrifying tales and even more horrifying art. So the team behind Scary Stories 2 has a lot to choose from. Might I suggest “The Wendigo”? That was one of the chapters that frightened me to my core when I was a kid.
Whatever stories they end up telling, my hope is that Scary Stories 2 maintains the same energy and loyalty to the books. The first movie definitely nailed the look of the short story collections and that was the most important thing. Because I don’t have to tell you just how freaky those books looked.
Source: THR
