This movie has everything for kids who grew up in the 80s and savored Alvin Schwartz's books. It has ballpoint pens featuring ladies who take off their clothes, straight from the pages of a Lillian Vernon catalog. And while I can quietly concede a few of Owen Gleiberman's points from his Variety review, I think this is a particularly interesting film to look at when considering the concept of adaptation.

I think this film is a labor of love made by people who love being scared for those of us who also love being scared. And it's so richly detailed. I think that those details are also incredibly meaningful to those of us who grew up loving this kind of entertainment. And I love how it examines the microcosm. We get to see the inner workings of small town America in the late 1960s, albeit fictional small town Pennsylvania. And while this was shot in Canada, it certainly reminds me of the small town in Pennsylvania where I grew up.

And I think in this small town, we also get to see what the impact of gossip and rumor-mongering is on those people who are being gossiped about, both in the distant past with Sarah Bellows, and also how similar scuttlebutt impacts the character of Stella. And I think even in this, when they're talking about local legends, the protagonists are sharing variations on the rumors about Sarah Bellows and that empty mansion among themselves. And at the end, when Stella repeats that line, “Stories hurt, stories heal,” I think we get the feeling that she's not, she's not speaking exclusively about the written word.

I think there's so much smart context and backstory in this film that's delivered to us almost totally organically in such a non-forced way that it's almost hard to talk about all the levels on which it operates.

I think what gets a little bit lost in this film is a thorough understanding either among the filmmakers or among us as audiences as to what the exact supernatural mechanism is, or at least what the rules that govern it are.

Sarah Bellow's rage is the force. But where can it go? What can it do? And is it sort of constrained within the borders of Mill Valley? Can it go anywhere that it wants?

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark presents nostalgic scenarios that are mostly negative, but it evokes a nostalgia in me that is positive. I think if you were a certain kind of kid who grew up at a certain time, Scary Stories is like sitting down in the company of old friends. And some of those old friends are very, very frightening.

To listen to our episode on Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, click here.

Bradford Louryk