There are few horror franchises capable of appealing to my nostalgia more than Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Granted, I haven’t read the books since the 1990s, but they were among my favorites as a child. Truth be told, they served as a jumping point for generating my interest in the horror genre, urban myths and the macabre in general.
For those unfamiliar, the series was made up of anthology-style books that were the closest thing you’d get to putting H.P. Lovecraft into the hands of children. In fact, my friends and I remain amazed at how youngsters were given the green light to read such spooky material to this day – and we were the generation that’d been treated to the original, more graphic artwork that’s since been replaced.
In other words, one could say there are folks who’ve been waiting decades for a silver screen adaptation. And now, thanks in part to Guillermo del Toro, the dream (or nightmare, if you’d rather) has become reality. Just feast your eyes on the latest trailer embedded at the top of this article to view some new footage, then you can ponder whether that walking corpse will ever find their big toe.
Also on display in the video package are the infamous scarecrow and even the Red Spot, which has played a role in the film’s marketing campaign. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see which other tales influenced the writing team and director André Øvredal.
For more info, be sure to check out the official synopsis:
“It’s 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind…but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time—stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah’s terrifying tome.”
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark arrives in theaters on August 9th.
