Difficult Adaptations: Scary Stories Misses the Mark

One of the most daunting tasks for any filmmaker is to take a highly stylized text that has a foothold in that medium and try to adapt it to the screen. It is not easy and is often met with criticism from a dedicated, pre-established fan base.

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Sometimes in order to make adaptations work, directors will try explore the story by bending and working the original content to fit in a cinematic area. One example of this is the adaptation of the 1981 publication, Who Censored Roger Rabbit? into the similarly titled WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? (1988). In the original print most of the characters where from comic strips and mostly communicated through speech bubbles which became a plot point for the book. The film featured cartoon characters with full speech so it could be adapted to the form.

Other times filmmakers turn to technology to try to marry the two together. An example of this would be the highly stylized SIN CITY (2004). Although director Robert Rodriguez refers to the film as a translation rather than adaptation, it fully brings Frank Miller's graphic novel to a cinematic form. Another example was Richard Linklater's approach to Philip K. Dick's novel for A SCANNER DARKLY (2006). The entire film was rotoscoped so that the scramble suit (a suit that constantly changes a persons features) could be grounded within the visual look of the film.

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Fun Fact Connection: SIN CITY and A SCANNER DARKLY

On a night between filming days for SIN CITY, Robert Rodriguez put on a concert at a local nightclub with his own band and Bruce Willis. The concert was attended by the film's cast and crew, as well as the cast and crew of A SCANNER DARKLY, as they were filming near by at that time.

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Director André Øvredal certainly had his work cut out for him by taking on the adapting of the popular and visually stunning children's series Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark (originally printed in 1981). Adapting the look of the film I would give Øvredal and his production design team full marks as illustrated in the image below.

However, adapting the storytelling and the tone to work as a film is a whole other challenge. In a book, there is lots to draw from exposition to create suspense, what a character is thinking, descriptions of sounds and elements, whereas in cinema exposition is boring as the story comes from editing and as much as what we don't see rather than descriptive dialogue.

At this point, I should mentioned that my interest in seeing the film wasn't because of the books. Rather I stumbled across an article on the Variety Web site that suggested SCARY STORY TO TELL IN THE DARK will be making over $20 Million at the box office this weekend.

Until now, the movie was not on my radar as one that I was planning on seeing. However, since it is over performing in a crowded market, I became interested.

I was hoping that it may be something like LIGHTS OUT (2016). David F. Sandberg's summer horror film that performed really well and put him on the path as a marketable horror director. That film did over $21 million on opening weekend and made approximately $67 million overall. However, where LIGHTS OUT succeeded, SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK falls short.

LIGHTS OUT made the audience work, it was a modest film with subtle direction that made viewers use their imagination in what was not being shown, cutaway or implied in the imagery. Whereas SCAREY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK was explicit, from the monsters, to the actions, to the sounds, exposition and the (anti) climax, everything was on the screen and would have benefited from the adage 'less is more'. Although the production design was interesting, it was not scary or creepy. To me it felt like flipping through an art book, checking out the occasion sketch that catches your eye without it really building or layering to lead to a bigger purpose or concept.

I appreciate that Øvredal didn't go for the gore (not my flavour of root beer). In fact, the first 30 minutes were quite promising as we are introduced to the characters in "Small-town, USA" in 1968, accompanied by the Donovan's song Season of the Witch. That particular sequence was quite enjoyable, and for me the highlight of the film, as everything afterwards seemed to slide without hitting a payoff, so much so, that the anti-climactic ending may only frustrate viewers who stick it out to the end.

My recommendation would be to give this one a miss and turn to classic scary stories of anthology series such as The Twilight Zone, or Tales of the Unexpected as their introductions alone hit the mark on the creepy scale.

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK is currently streaming on Prime Video.

*originally posted as an Now Playing Review - August 12, 2019