![]() (Another film directed by Øvredal that we have seen, Troll Hunter, from 2010, is decidedly weird in a foreign, Norwegian sort of way.) The director, André Øvredal, is a Norwegian veteran of supernatural/horror film and television, most recently of The Autopsy of Jane Doe, a critical success that wrangled an 87% positive rating from Rotten Tomatoes. Austin Abrams, currently 22 years old, is a movie and television veteran since 2011, and plays a convincing high school bully without seeming like a college senior. The 4 musketeers (our name) are played by Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush and Austin Zajur, normal teen types most people should be able to relate to. ![]() The copyright for the front cover art for the book Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, written by Alvin Schwartz, is believed to belong to the publisher, HarperCollins, or the cover artist, Stephen Gammell. None of the characters is so good looking as to be unrealistic, nor are any of the characters distractingly funny looking or displaying annoying habits. With a modest budget of $28 million, Scary Stories does not have blockbuster actors, but those it employs do an excellent job of their characters. If you find the “horrors” kind of hokey (one in particular you will quickly recognize as the one we refer to here), remember, the goofy appearance of the specter is taken from the book. You will also see the horrors in the movie closely resemble the illustrations in the books. The plot uses actual stories from the books, though of course not all the stories as that would make the film too long! (Its running time is 108 minutes, a tad longer than many horror movies.) Rather than tell you which stories are used, we encourage you to read the books (they are not long and read rather easily) and see for yourself. Will they survive? You will have to see the movie! The 4 buddies must fight the supernatural entity and the book to survive the tale. The scary stories in the book (get it?) have a way of coming true, much to the disadvantage of the “star” of each tale. Of course, the friends have to go to the house and find the place haunted, especially a book written by the subject girl from many decades ago. The horror part of the movie (remember, we do not provide spoilers, just general outlines) revolves around a local house where a girl hanged herself after being kept prisoner by her evil family. Theatrical release poster, as owned and copyrighted by Lionsgate and CBS Films. The tormentors are kind of stereotypical preppy looking jock type bullies, but trust me, all this characterization works pretty well. Another familiar movie mechanism is for a 4 th friend to become one of the core companions, in this case a Mexican American drifter of roughly about 19 or 20 years old. Set in 1968, 3 close friends of the decidedly B-team category of high school students (2 boys and a girl) are developed as kids picked on by the more athletic and better looking crowd, a common high school movie theme. While not a pure anthology type of film as the books are, the movie instead uses a central story and characters around which to weave the tales related in the film. It was with this fond memory that we went to the movies this morning. Aimed at the preteen and teen-aged audience, even as an adult I found the stories interesting enough to read and finish the books. Perhaps you read the books back in the day (the 3 books spanned the time from 1981 to 1991), as we did. On August 13, 2019, we went and saw the latest horror movie from Hollywood, the movie version of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
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