Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Bargain Basement "IT" - SPOILERS

Full disclosure; I have not read the books of short stories "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" by Alvin Schwartz and thus cannot compare the adaptations of the tales with the source material. I am familiar with some of the artwork however and the influence that the books have had on culture at large. Unfortunately I didn't have these as a kid but just by looking at the artwork I can assure you I probably would have fucking loved them.

My girlfriend started drawing these. Not sure why.

I think the basement's starting to get to her.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get on with reviewing the movie. 

I think that the art of the anthology horror movie has almost been lost. You don't really get movies like "Creepshow", "Body Bags", "Two Evil Eyes" or "Quicksilver Highway" anymore and when you do it tends to be direct to DVD fare, not theatrical releases from big studios. So when I heard about this movie coming out, being vaguely aware of the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" books, I thought this could be it. The film that brings back the anthology horror film. I mean it's a book of short stories. What could they possibly do? Set it in the 60s in some attempt to associate themselves with the recent "Stephen King's IT" adaptations and slam hamfisted social commentary down our throats through some predictable story about a book of tales that come true? 

You already know that's exactly what they did. 

"When we started talking about this about five years ago, I had to think about it ... Anthology films are always as bad as the worst story in them — they're never as good as the best story... I remembered in Pan's Labyrinth, I created a book called 'the Book of Crossroads'. I thought it could be great if we had a book that reads you, and it writes what you're most afraid of. Then the theme became stories we tell each other."

- Guillermo Del Toro (2019, San Diego Comic Con)

So first of all, there was absolutely no reason to set this story in the 60s. None whatsoever. I know Guillermo has a tendency to make horror films with a historical war back drop, a la "The Devil's Backbone" and "Pan's Labyrinth", but those movies were orchestrated (by Del Toro for one thing) specifically to cater to those time periods. Here it feels like the filmmakers are trying to ride on the coat tails of the recent "IT" adaptations by shoehorning in the period setting. Which I'm sure the writers were fine with because fuck me did they have it out for Richard Nixon.

Seriously, if you come away from the film thinking Nixon was the villain that's probably because he was. Forget spiders bursting out of a girl's face or weird smiling fat demons in hospital hallways; the ghost of Tricky Dick is living rent free in the minds of the screenwriters. 

I am NOT a spook

From Nixon campaign posters defaced with swastikas (yes, comparing each other's candidates to Nazis is not a recent development by any stretch) to the periodic intervals in the film where we're treated to black and white broadcasts of the presidential campaign Nixon eventually won, it's clear that this film feels like it needs to remind you that, yes, we are indeed in 1968 and that war is bad and Nixon was worse.

It's kind of reminiscent of "Atomic Blonde" in that sense. The filmmakers don't have the talent to immerse you in the year of 68 and so they have to slam it in your face once every so often. Oh look, here's some footage of Nixon talking about not wanting to bomb anyone unless it's absolutely necessary with an afro-sporting black woman sassily opining "Tricky Dick? That ain't no name fo' a president!" And here's a radio presenter with his hourly reminder that war is bad and shit, just in case you forgot. It has little if anything to do with the plot but we're desperate for critics to finish on our faces with a shower of good reviews and we don't know how to do it any other way.

Actually that's not totally true, it does kind of have something to do with the plot but we'll get to that later.

So the story starts off with Stella Nichols, a miserable nerd whose mum left her and her dad because she's a miserable nerd which only makes her more of a miserable nerd and this situation doesn't really change at all throughout the film. She goes out trick or treating with her two, possibly friend-zoned, guy friends Auggie and Chuck; despite the fact that all of them are in high school and should not be knocking on stranger's doors in costumes asking for candy. No, that kind of potentially dangerous activity is relegated solely to elementary school aged kids, thank you very much. 

"Okay everyone, it's time for the yearly cull. Survival of the fittest."

So Auggie is basically Sheldon Cooper from "Big Bang Theory" but more tolerable and Chuck is a raging retard (who we first see fishing turds out of the toilet with the bathroom door wide open). This being a Stephen King rip off, naturally there are one dimensional, psychopathic jocks armed with baseball bats roaming the streets and Chuck thinks it would be appropriate to tempt fate for both himself and his friends by setting a bag of the aformentioned turds on fire and chucking it into the jock's car while he's driving.

No doubt shocked by the jock's reactions to almost being burned alive in their own vehicle the group escape to a nearby drive-in cinema where they meet the most sensitively named latino character since Chico Gonzales from "Dirty Harry", Ramon Rodriguez, as he sits quietly watching "Night of the Living Dead", making everyone in the audience wish they were watching "Night of the Living Dead". It's at this point that I start placing bets as to how long it will be before Ramon Sombrero Burrito is racially abused.

It didn't take long. After all, anyone in a movie nowadays who isn't white in an R rated movie has to at some point be racially abused because writers nowadays cannot think of any other way to make an audience sympathise with a brown person. As I ponder as to how Ramon managed to get his car over the border fence the jocks are shooed off and Stella suddenly decides that she's got a craving for dark and swarthy meat and so, out of nowhere, suggests that he join them on an expedition to a haunted house that no one has mentioned up until this point. 

Upon them entering the house they find a book of horror stories written by a girl who was held captive in a secret room because her family were a bunch of rich fucks. One by one Stella's friends are made victims of the book as it writes stories about each of them based on their worst fears.

This film is bargain basement "IT".

It has the elements: Period small town setting, group of friends, thing that imitates your worst fears, psycho jocks/greasers, shit parents, racism, etc, etc. The problem is the characters are slasher movie tier, the visuals are the same blue tinted, almost day-for-night shit that we're accustomed to nowadays, predictable jump scares abound and its all framed with some of the worst social commentary I've seen in a recent movie. 

It didn't even have to be bad. Ramon, you see, turns out to be a draft dodger and so when the book cottons on to this it sends a fucked up looking creatures that builds itself out of various body parts, no doubt in reference to Ramon's brother being sent back home from the war "in pieces". Naturally when the cops catch him they brand him a coward and shove him in lock up. The idea actually isn't bad and the "Jangly Man" creature (From the story "Me Tie Doughty Walker") is one of the best parts of the film, putting aside the un-scary CGI.

What it would be like if Willem Dafoe melted.

Again though, the filmmakers don't have the talent to execute the idea with any kind of subtlety. Maybe it would have been better if the police officer sympathized with Ramon, perhaps showing him a scar from when he himself was drafted to fight in Vietnam, thereby getting a more in-depth look into the lives of the people in the town and how this war on the other side of the world has impacted them. But no, police man bad, so he kicks the Mexican into a jail cell yelling "YER GONNA DO YER DUTY TO 'MERICA BOAH!" as cannons blast, eagles cry and Star Spangled Banner blares out in the distance.

The positives? Like I said, putting aside the CGI, some of the creatures are pretty cool, some of the photography is interesting and there's a least one scene, in a hospital, that does manage to almost hit the mark in terms of horror. And it's the scene that almost completely eschews any jump scares.

Either Honey Boo's Boo's mother had become an albino

or Sadako had really let herself go.

The negatives? Everything else. Aside from some interesting camera moments it's dreary to look at and becomes a chore to watch. It's largely humourless and whatever humour does come across tends to be groan inducing Whedonisms that not only fall flat but feel anachronistic for the period it's set in. The characters are largely 2D and so it's hard to really care about any of them. 

Del Toro was wrong. They should have just taken some of the more popular stories from the books, fleshed them out a bit and released it as an anthology movie. Set it in the same town by all means, even have the stories linked with common characters and settings. "Trick 'r Treat"  did it back in 2007 and I remember that movie actually being pretty great. 

As naked female werewolf orgy attests.

Top it all off with shit tier social commentary and a confusing ending that seems to gun for a sequel and you have yet another crappy modern horror to throw on to the ever growing pile. Despite this it hasn't made me lose interest in reading the old books so I'll be picking them up soon to see what they were like when they were, hopefully, good.

It honestly would have been better if they had made a movie about a small town where people are murdered one by one in gruesome fashions and it turned out the killer was literally Richard Nixon with a sack over his head. At least that would have been funny.

I'd call it "The Town that Dreaded Dick."