The haunting stories that once spooked us as children have been brought to life by Guillermo Del Torro in the movie “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” The story is set in the ‘70s in a small town called Mill Valley. Main characters Stella, Chuck, Ramon and August (Auggie) are new additions to make the stories tie together, unlike the books, where every story is a different plot. 

Traditionally, Del Torro’s movies are very gruesome and dark, but in this movie the creatures were somewhat frightening and the movie wasn’t as dark as his other movie, Pan’s Labyrinth. Granted it’s a kids movie, it might have been too gruesome for kids to watch 

While running away from a bully, Tommy, Stella and her friends go to an abandoned house where they find the infamous book of scary stories. They summon the spirit who wrote them, Sarah Bellow, which leads to them being tormented by the creatures.

The creatures include “The Pale Lady,” Spiders from “The Dot,” The corpse from “The Big Toe,” “The Jangly Man” and the scarecrow from “Harold.”  Although the creatures in the movie look just as haunting as the drawings in the books,unfortunately, they only show a couple creatures out of the many stories that the book contained. 

“Harold” was originally about farmers who took out their daily frustrations on the scarecrow, until one day Harold came to life and fought back. In the movie, the character Tommy was the one who beat up Harold, not the farmers. A lot of the book stories were shortened and not as scary as I expected it to be, but it was interesting and has lots of fun twists and turns.