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“I’m afraid that we woke something up.”

In André Øvredal ’s “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” these loaded words are spoken by one of the film’s five central teens, tormented by a self-writing storybook they had carelessly taken away from a haunted house in their small town of Mill Valley, PA around Halloween of 1968. Now let’s count all the formulaic components (as well as our consequent blessings) in this vista, shall we? Group of misfit kids on a mission? Check. Period nostalgia (that's not the overdone '80s of “Stranger Things” and “IT”)? Check. Small-town Americana that delightfully rhymes with “Hill Valley”? Check. Halloween? Haunted house? Possessed object? Check check check. That’s certainly enough familiar ingredients to make a foolproof pot of genre stew. And thanks to Øvredal’s visual flair and visceral dedication to the monsters of Guillermo del Toro (among the team of writers and producers here), clearly a major influence on the “ Trollhunter ” director’s bittersweet approach to the field, this satisfying though far from innovative dish boasts comforting flavors throughout.

If you, like me, did not grow up with tents in backyards, overnight trips to spooky lakeside grounds or marshmallows by campfires, you might be foreign to the world of the “Scary Stories” trilogy of books; with creepy tales collected by Alvin Schwartz , and illustrations to match done by Stephen Gammell. The good news is, Øvredal’s stylishly old-school flick doesn’t require any homework—your affection for genre-work like “ The Changeling ,” “Ringu” and “The Night of the Living Dead” as well as a mild nostalgic appreciation for “Goonies”-type fare will suffice. Though it’s still helpful to know that these are anthology-style books. Co-scribes Dan and Kevin Hagemen (along with story crafters del Toro, Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton ) have created a unifying (though choppy) narrative arc around a number of the popular yarns of the books—“Harold,” “The Big Toe” and “The Red Spot” among them—while keeping with the novels’ PG-13 spirit. Among the things “Scary Stories” might wake up could very well be a newfound appetite for horror in younger movie-watchers.

At the heart of the tale that celebrates the healing power of storytelling is the sweetly introverted Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti of “ Wildlife ”), a motherless aspiring writer with dad issues and a love of all-things-scary—her room is decorated wall-to-wall with tales and creatures she worships. There is also the enigmatic Ramón ( Michael Garza ), a Mexican-American teen who attempts to pass through town, but lingers around after saving Stella’s crew from bullies one night at the drive-in. Then we have the nerdy Auggie ( Gabriel Rush ) in a Pierrot costume for Halloween—his outfit choice is a successful running gag—the goofy Chuck ( Austin Zajur ) as well as his beautiful, popular sister Ruth ( Natalie Ganzhorn ). When the quintet visits an out-of-bounds, boarded-up mansion with a tragic past one night and takes away a storybook belonging to the spirit of the once-murderous Sarah Bellows (Kathleen Pollard)—she is said to be locked away by her rich and cruel family—they disturb the vengeful ghost and end up disappearing one by one. Gruesome tales start to slowly appear in the book, designed in accordance with the teens’ worst fears.

Predictably, the set pieces of Øvredal’s film are a lot more fun to enjoy individually than to consider them within the context of the overarching tale. In that, the seams around the anthology show—we don’t quite connect with the kids’ individual fears in a deep sense when their nightmares find them. Thankfully however, even Øvredal seems to know the parts here are greater than the sum and doesn’t shy away from showing off the visual tricks he’s got up his sleeve to make each spine-tingling sequence pop in their own way. From the astonishing opening montage featuring Donovan's “ Season of the Witch ” (a new version by Lana Del Rey comes in the end) to crawling spiders and stalker-y ghouls, the bite-sized thrills of “Scary Stories” pack plenty of jolts, though more effective for adolescent eyeballs than adults.

The film also engages with the country’s political history and racism, but only to varying degrees of success. With the backdrop of a detailed production design by David Brisbin that brings the era’s character to life, we get clear shots of Nixon on posters and TV and are reminded of the Vietnam War dread—a labored ambition that doesn’t quite land. Still, “Scary Stories” is a strangely uplifting throwback to old-fashioned clans of investigative teens. While it doesn’t break any new ground, there is plenty of vintage fun to be had with kids who feel their way through life’s impending fears and live to tell the tale.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

Rated PG-13 for terror/violence, disturbing images, thematic elements, language including racial epithets, and brief sexual references.

111 minutes

Zoe Colletti as Stella Michaels

Michael Garza as Ramón Morales

Gabriel Rush as Auggie Hillerbrandt

Austin Zajur as Chuck Steinberg

Dean Norris as Roy Nicholls

Gil Bellows as Chief Turner

• André Øvredal

Writer (novel)

• Alvin Schwartz

Writer (story by)

• Marcus Dunstan
• Patrick Melton
• Dan Hageman
• Kevin Hageman
• Guillermo Del Toro

Cinematographer

• Patrick Larsgaard
• Marco Beltrami
• Anna Drubich

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Scary stories to tell in the dark, common sense media reviewers.

Scary but very entertaining movie based on classic books.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Many mistakes are made, but characters do try to h

Stella makes a fatal mistake in the beginning, but

Several moments of terror and some blood. Scary mo

A teen has a "striptease" pen that reveals a naked

A (possible) use of "f--k," plus uses of "s--t," "

1968-era brands shown: Tootsie Roll, Coca-Cola (in

Teen bullies drink/get drunk on Halloween night. A

Parents need to know that Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a horror movie based on a popular series of books by Alvin Schwartz from the early 1980s. It's well made and fun for horror fans, but it's too scary and edgy for younger viewers. Expect moments of terror, a little blood, jump scares, and creepy…

Positive Messages

Many mistakes are made, but characters do try to help each other despite being very scared -- and in the end, an important promise is made and kept.

Positive Role Models

Stella makes a fatal mistake in the beginning, but she works tirelessly to try to make up for it and rescue her friends. She's something of an outcast, but she finds an outlet through writing.

Violence & Scariness

Several moments of terror and some blood. Scary monsters. Jump scares. Characters vanish. Stabbing with pitchfork. Bullies smash beer bottles and beat a scarecrow with a baseball bat. Severed body parts (which assemble into a monster). Stew filled with toes, eyeballs, etc. Flaming bag of poop thrown at car. Giant, squirm-inducing pimple on teen's face. References to the Vietnam War. Nazi symbol shown (on a poster of Nixon).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A teen has a "striptease" pen that reveals a naked woman when tilted (the ink runs down the tube); she's nearly but not entirely shown. Flirting and sex-related talk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A (possible) use of "f--k," plus uses of "s--t," "a--hole," "hell," "goddamn," "butt," "turd," "stiffy," "perv," "shut up," "oh my God." A racial slur ("wetback") is both spoken and written.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

1968-era brands shown: Tootsie Roll, Coca-Cola (in a fast-food cup with the logo on it).

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Teen bullies drink/get drunk on Halloween night. A teen's mother yells "Are you drunk again?"

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a horror movie based on a popular series of books by Alvin Schwartz from the early 1980s. It's well made and fun for horror fans, but it's too scary and edgy for younger viewers. Expect moments of terror, a little blood, jump scares, and creepy monsters. A character is stabbed with a pitchfork, and gross stuff is shown (eyeballs, severed toes, severed heads, etc.); body parts assemble to make a monster. A teen has a "striptease" pen that reveals a naked woman when tilted (though nothing graphic is shown), and there's some mild flirting and sex-related talk (a character is called a "perv"). Language includes a (possible) use of "f--k," plus "s--t," "a--hole," and a few other words, including a racial slur. Teen bullies are shown drunk, smashing beer bottles; one teen's mother asks, "Are you drunk again?" To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (32)
• Kids say (110)

Based on 32 parent reviews

Not that scary

Finally found a pretty good horror movie for my daughter, what's the story.

In SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK, nerdy, horror-loving outcast Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) is urged to come out on Halloween night, 1968, with her two misfit best friends, Augie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur). Their plan is to prank the town bully ( Austin Abrams ), but they're caught and chased. At the drive-in, the teens duck into the car of Ramon (Michael Garza), a loner who's passing through town. Later, when the coast is clear, they take Ramon to the local haunted house and tell him about the legend of Sarah Bellows, whose ghost is said to tell scary stories and make children disappear. In a secret room, Stella finds Sarah's actual book, and before long, scary things start happening and kids begin to vanish. Stella must find out the real story behind Sarah Bellows and set things right before her own name comes up in the book.

Is It Any Good?

Somewhat similar in mood and tone to It , this hugely entertaining scary story has its own delightfully demonic vibe, with strong characters, striking atmosphere, and furious frights. Based on a collection of short horror stories from the early 1980s by Alvin Schwartz (with horrific illustrations by Stephen Gammell), which was intended for kids, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark cooks up its own mythology as a way of packaging the books' mini-tales into a cohesive story. Set in 1968, the movie conjures up a kind of freedom in which the young heroes have the space and gumption to run about town and do their own thing. (Stella's room is filled with classic horror movie posters and monster magazines, as well as a half-finished tale in her typewriter.) We love hanging out with them, and their ghost chase is as secretly thrilling as it is scary.

It begins on Halloween night, and then Night of the Living Dead is playing at the drive-in, while Vietnam hovers in the background and Richard Nixon's re-election is right around the corner. Oscar-winning filmmaker/monster-maker Guillermo Del Toro -- who co-wrote Scary Stories ' screenplay with his Trollhunters co-writers Dan and Kevin Hageman -- seems to have added the Ramon character as a way to highlight bigotry, which can be just as scary as ghosts. At the helm, talented Norwegian director Andre Ovredal keeps a measured, tense pace and uses physical space -- including the haunted Bellows house, a cornfield, a creepy hospital, and even a bedroom -- to great shocking effect. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark has the stuff to become a perennial re-watch when the frost is on the pumpkin.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Scary Stores to Tell in the Dark 's violence . How much is shown, or not shown? How did it make you feel? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How scary is the movie? What's the appeal of scary movies ? Why do people like to be scared?

How does the movie compare with the books, if you've read them?

How are bullies depicted? What happens to them? What are some other ways to deal with bullies?

Is Stella a strong female character? What are her flaws? What are her strengths? How much does she manage to do, even when she's scared?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 9, 2019
• On DVD or streaming : November 5, 2019
• Cast : Zoe Margaret Colletti , Michael Garza , Austin Zajur
• Director : Andre Ovredal
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Horror
• Topics : Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Run time : 111 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : terror/violence, disturbing images, thematic elements, language including racial epithets, and brief sexual references
• Last updated : March 19, 2024

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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Reviews

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark has Guillermo Del Toro’s fingerprints all over the film but benefits heavily from André Øvredal’s assured direction.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 15, 2024

Attempts to replicate Gammell's iconic visuals mostly work, but the Vietnam backstory is undercooked, villain Tommy is dispatched too early and most of the set pieces are too brief. What worked in Schwartz's campfire tales doesn't translate to screen

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 17, 2023

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a distinct horror flick, with well-developed leads, and a creative approach to a unique premise.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 24, 2023

When Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark brings Gammell's art to life, it's terrifying.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 26, 2022

Episode 46: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark / Share / The King of Comedy

Full Review | Original Score: 46/100 | Oct 4, 2021

Scary Stories is the perfect gateway horror film to fire up youthful imaginations, yet disturbing enough to scratch even the most seasoned genre buff's itch.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 10, 2021

"Not ghosts but human beings," reads a slogan for International Albinism Awareness Day, so it's ironic that the sole person with albinism in Scary Stories shows up as a ghost.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Apr 22, 2021

During one of the longer sleuthing scenes I wondered, "When is the pacing building suspense and when is it building tedium?"

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 31, 2021

While only rated PG-13, this Guillermo del Toro produced horror film delivers more than its fair share of thrills, turning the popular YA book series into a pseudo-anthology film that avoids the trap of being inconsistent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Nov 21, 2020

Tone, flow and chemistry... those are the three things that didn't really mesh.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 26, 2020

It does it job at being a good horror flick for a night out of the house, but it still isn't as bold as it probably could've been.

Full Review | Sep 24, 2020

A nasty slice of PG-13 horror that shows a family-friendly feel doesn't mean the boundaries of terror can't be pushed and twisted with grotesque glee.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 16, 2020

A PG-13 adaptation that delivers intermittent frights amid plenty of campy nostalgia as it tries to stitch together unrelated spooky stories with mixed results. One can't help but think that it would have been better as an episodic TV series.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 24, 2020

I liked Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, I just wish I loved it.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 8, 2020

A very good Goosebumps movie, not a very good Scary Stories movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 30, 2020

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is true to its name ... genuinely creepy, with an incredible sense of atmosphere.

Full Review | Jun 27, 2020

Format-wise, the film may have benefited from being a more straightforward anthology of shorts based on the stories, which were effective because they were so brutally concise.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Feb 20, 2020

These and other spooky specters are memorably incarnated, to be sure. But I'm pretty easy to scare, and I can't say I found the movie, directed by Norway's Andre Ovredal of 2010's excellent Trollhunter, all that scary.

Full Review | Jan 6, 2020

Scary Stories struggles to get around to making whatever additional point it had, instead using a wealth of in-between scenes to justify its feature-length format.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2019

Good bones are what keep Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark upright.

Full Review | Nov 21, 2019

• Entertainment /
• Movie Review

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is surprisingly scary and insightful

It’s a smart horror film about the stories we tell ourselves and why they frighten and compel us.

By Noah Berlatsky

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With the success of Stranger Things and the new film version of Stephen King’s It , nostalgia feels like something of a current horror trope. In these stories, the evocation of childhood fears mixes with pleasurable memories of childhood pop culture, adding a bit of sweet to horror’s usual bitterness.

At first, the theatrical film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark looks like it might be following in Stranger Things ’ footsteps. The first scene is set to the background music of Donovan’s wonderful “ Season of the Witch ,” played by a never-seen DJ who recalls Wolfman Jack from American Graffiti . These period touches aren’t winking celebrations of childhood, though. The film is set in the past because director André Øvredal has something specific to say about that era and the children who lived in it.

The movie is loosely based on Alvin Schwartz’s famous collections of short horror stories for kids. A group of friends led by Stella (Zoe Colletti) investigates a haunted house on Halloween. There, they find and take an old book left behind by a long-dead child from a wealthy family. Sarah, now a ghost, starts writing new short stories in the book and the stories come true, resulting in horrible fates for Stella’s friends. Stella and her love interest, an out-of-towner named Ramón, try to learn about Sarah’s past in order to stop her before her stories do them in.

The stories Sarah writes in the book are the parts of the movie based on Schwartz’s work. These setpieces are excellent. They have the nightmarish, inevitable illogical logic of folk tales or urban legends. Fans who were terrified as children by narratives of spiders hatching where they’re not supposed to hatch will not be disappointed, nor will those who fondly remember the creature who assembles itself from its own severed bits. Harold the scarecrow is particularly effective. Øvredal reminds viewers that you don’t really need spectacular makeup or gouts of blood to create a good scare. You can just walk by the same straw-stuffed figure a couple of times and then notice it’s not there anymore.

The frame story, by contrast, isn’t based directly on Schwartz’s writing, and it’s very different. The narrative of Stella and her friends abandons the book’s taut economy for a meandering supernatural slasher. It’s like Nightmare on Elm Street with a less visually compelling villain. 

It’s true that the frame is fairly ruthless in its willingness to do in its characters, especially compared with something like Stranger Things . But it also has themes of reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, and even anti-racism, all of which sit oddly beside the source material’s straightforward, scare-the-kids-so-badly-they-never-sleep-again ethos. Colletti and Garza have excellent chemistry; their scenes together sizzle. But is anyone going to this film to see a teen romance, no matter how convincingly portrayed? It was always going to be a challenge to adapt a book of short stories, but Øvredal really seems to have gone out of his way to irritate his core audience. It’s an odd choice.

Odd choices aren’t always bad choices, though. Gradually, it becomes clear that the story Øvredal wants to tell is about childhood trauma — specifically, about what parents do to, and expect from, their children. Stella’s mother abandoned her, which is part of why she forms such a quick, unhealthy connection with Sarah, whose parents abused her. One of Stella’s friends is attacked after his parents decide to leave him without notice overnight; another is pursued by a hideous, bloated creature who looks like a parody of a pregnant woman. Parents, the movie suggests, are writing their kids’ stories, and what they write is death.

That may seem paranoid. But in 1968, it was literally true. Those televisions in the background often show images of Vietnam. One shows Richard Nixon, lying as per usual, as he talks about how he doesn’t want to drop bombs. This background tale about the necessity of war and the need for men to fight entangles a number of the male characters. One high school kid who disappears prompts his peers to speculate that he may have just gone off to the army early because he was so eager to kill communists. A war story substitutes for a horror story, and at least one of them is the true tale of why a boy isn’t coming home.

The 1968 setting isn’t a fun retro jaunt. It’s part of the film’s meditation on how the world is made up of stories and how those stories trap people. Placing the film in the past is a way of framing it as fiction; it’s occurring once upon a time. The true story of the 1968 election is slotted in beside false stories of the supernatural, even as Stella and her friends try to research Sarah’s true history, which is eventually written down, then received as a fictional story. Truth and lies slide around each other, tying knots around children’s lives.

”You don’t read the book. The book reads you,” Stella declares, in a campy, melodramatic line. But Scary Stories is remarkably insightful and sober in its assessment of the way stories control people, rather than the other way around. “This person is insane, so we can torture her.” “That person must go overseas and shoot a stranger.” Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was supposed to be the summer’s virtuoso meta-fiction, but its rewritten happy ending, musing on the impotence of writing, seems a lot less bleak than Scary Stories ’ acknowledgment that some scripts will take you far away where you’ll never be seen again. 

That’s not to say that the ending, which clumsily gestures toward a sequel, is perfect — nor, for that matter, is the film as a whole. Like the title says, the movie has more than one tale to tell, and the disjunction in tone and purpose is sometimes jarring or just inexplicable. (Why is there a car chase in this movie?) But Øvredal is to be commended for simultaneously staying true to a beloved franchise and twisting its head around to face in an unexpected direction. Thanks to him, the film isn’t just a collection of scary stories. It’s a meditation on why the stories we tell ourselves shape us and why that’s the scary bit.

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Film Review: ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’

How did they turn the fabled '80s horror-story collection into a movie? By recreating its greatest hits, minus the creepiness that made them great.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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If you were a kid growing up in the ’80s or ’90s and you read Alvin Schwartz’ 1981 spook-tale collection “ Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ” (or its two sequels, published in 1984 and 1991), you may have felt like the stories added up to your own private “Twilight Zone,” to be consumed with a flashlight under the covers. They had a subversive wonderstruck creepiness intertwined with a weirdly comforting morality. Of course, much of the impact came from Stephen Gammell’s drawings, which were jaw-droppingly horrific for the illustrations in a book aimed at children. His melty black-and-white images of skeletons and corpses and rats and scarecrows and wounded bodies were at once fleshy and ghostly, like dreams with a quality of decay. You could call his style pop-art Francis Bacon, but it also owed something to the children’s-book illustrator Garth Williams (of “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little” fame). His drawings were over-the-top EC Comics visions given an elegant Victorian timelessness.

The drawings, like the stories themselves, were extreme enough to provoke some of the reflexive repression that the original horror comics did back in the ’50s. Parents periodically tried to get the “Scary Stories” volumes tossed out of school libraries. (This was the ’80s, the age of “Footloose” and Tipper Gore; regulating, and even banning, popular culture was back in vogue.)

But it’s doubtful that there will be a comparable controversy over the film version of “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” Produced by (among others) Guillermo del Toro , and directed by the Norwegian art-monster maverick André Øvredal (“Trollhunter”), the movie faithfully re-creates the peak moments of half a dozen of Schwartz’ most popular stories, weaving them together — or maybe we should just say Scotch-taping them — into a patchy narrative set in Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1968.

If you want to know what it looks like when the heroine of “The Red Spot” watches a nest of spiders erupt out of the oversize pimple on her cheek, or when the young sap of “Harold” finds himself turning into a scarecrow, with straw shooting out of his mouth, body, and limbs, “Scary Stories” literalizes those moments quite handily. Yet there’s no aura to them; the emotions of the stories have been lost. We could be watching the standard ghoulish CGI effects that take place in any horror movie of the week.

The original tales in “Scary Stories” had an insidious, pre-media homespun awe. In the film version of “Scary Stories,” they’re just momentary Grand Guignol tidbits — literally, in the case of “The Big Toe” — served up like the greatest hits they are.

That may be enough to satisfy the series’ multiple generations of fans. (It never seemed to bother the masses of “Harry Potter” readers that the film adaptations lacked the books’ magical screwpot Dickensian atmosphere.) Yet if you watch “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” simply as the movie it is, what you’ll experience is a period teenage horror film at once wide-eyed and scattershot, one that never begins to sustain a mood, and that projects, a bit too callowly, its eagerness to cash in on the demo of “It” and “Stranger Things.” If the movie had simply been a collection of short tales, it might have been effective (though omnibus films are notoriously difficult to bring off, or to turn into hits). In attempting to meld the stories together and give them some sketchy coherence, the movie basically becomes an extended framing device that’s larger than any of the stories in it.

The action now pivots around Stella (the avidly captivating Zoe Colletti), a brainy high schooler who goes out on Halloween with her nerd friends and drops by a drive-in movie theater that’s playing “Night of the Living Dead” (the film opened on Oct. 1, 1968, making their casual familiarity with it possible, if none too plausible). She then leads them over to the local haunted house, which was once occupied by the Bellows clan, whose daughter, Sarah Bellows, is presented as one of those Gothic sacrificial-lamb waif-demon girls whose abuse gave rise to the horror we’re now watching. In this case, that takes the form of a dusty book of horror stories, literally written in blood (though with very elegant script), that Stella steals from the mansion. As she opens the book’s pages, she sees that Sarah’s stories are literally writing themselves.

You’d think, in a movie adaptation of “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” that the first thing the filmmakers would want to do is re-create the squishy spectral look and aura of Stephen Gammell’s drawings. But just as the book series was re-issued, 30 years later, with a more conventional set of illustrations (to great protest — the publisher than realized its mistake and went back to the originals), the movie doesn’t totally embrace the Gammell vision. It’s true to it, in a token way, with a grinning disembodied corpse that comes together in too hyperkinetic a fashion. But the only sequence that truly creeps is the one where Stella’s testy friend Chuck (Austin Zajur) stands in a red-drenched hospital corridor and confronts, from every angle, a pale rotund ghoul with a peeled face — it’s like he’s seeing the Ghost of Jacob Marley crossed with the bathtub crone from “The Shining.” For a moment, you shudder. But that’s the only time that “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” puts the night back in nightmare.

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Reviewed at AMC 34th Street, New York, Aug. 7, 2019. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 111 MIN.

• Production: A Lionsgate release of a CBS Films, Entertainment One, 1212 Entertainment, Double Dare You Productions, Sean Daniel Company production. Producers: Guillermo del Toro, Sean Daniel, Jason F. Brown, J. Miles Dale, Elizabeth Grave. Executive producers: Roberto Grande, Joshua Long.
• Crew: Director: André Øvredal. Screenplay: Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman. Camera (color, widescreen): Roman Osin. Editor: Patrick Larsgaard. Music: Marco Beltrami, Anna Drubich.
• With: Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Lorraine Toussaint, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Kathleen Pollard, Marie Ward.

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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Serves Unnerving, Old-School Horror to Kids

There is absolutely nothing original in  Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark , which just goes to show that you don’t need originality to be effective. That was also true of Alvin Schwartz’s classic children’s horror-story collections, published in the 1980s, which themselves drew from grisly folk legends and campfire tales. Schwartz’s work  aroused some controversy back in the day ; many adults felt the stories were too disturbing and violent for their intended audience, which of course made the books even more popular. The film, directed by André Øvredal and produced by Guillermo del Toro, has a bit of that same bait-and-switch sneakiness.

It starts off as a quaint, atmospheric small-town fright flick before plunging headlong into a full-on, grotesque shriek-fest with severed heads, scarecrows that fight back, demons that are ripped into pieces and then reassemble themselves, and asylums filled with giant bulbous smiling creatures that slowly corner you and consume you. The debates over the  Scary Stories  books may seem antiquated nowadays — with young adult literature having worked grisly, murderous dystopias for decades — but one still gets a pleasant, can-they-do-that chill at seeing unnerving, old-school horror in such a seemingly wholesome setting.

But that’s sort of the idea, of course, not just conceptually but also politically. The movie is set in the hamlet of Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, on the eve of the 1968 presidential election — one of the first things we see is a row of defaced Nixon posters on which the “X” has been replaced with a swastika — and reports about the Vietnam War constantly drone on TV sets in the background. The protagonists are a trio of high-school outcasts — horror buff and aspiring writer, Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti); shy, well-to-do Augie (Gabriel Rush); and scrappy, dorky Chuck (Austin Zajur) — who hook up with young drifter Ramon Morales (Michael Garza) while trying to evade a group of belligerent jocks. By the time they meet (at a drive-in theater showing  Night of the Living Dead , naturally), Ramon has already been harassed by the local racist cops. Later, the jocks will scrawl “wetback” all over his car.

Still on the run, the youths wind up in an abandoned house that once belonged to a family of local industrialists. Legend has it that the daughter of the family, a mysterious shut-in named Sarah Bellows, was a child murderer who also liked telling scary stories. In fact, anyone who heard one of her yarns promptly vanished. Stella soon finds Sarah’s half-empty book of stories — and new tales, featuring our heroes as characters, promptly start mysteriously appearing on the page, scrawled in blood. The stories themselves are turbo-loaded versions of Schwartz’s beloved ones. So, the severed head muttering “Me-tie dough-ty walker” still drops out of the chimney, but it’s accompanied by a lot more. Harold the scarecrow no longer skins his prey, opting instead for something less graphic and more disturbing. The notorious “Red Spot” also makes an appearance, but this time it’s accompanied by a dark cloud of menace. These incidents are no longer disconnected, grisly cosmic jokes, but evidence of a broader, growing evil.

Trying to find a way to undo these horrors, the kids decide to investigate what happened to Sarah Bellows and her family so many years ago. It almost goes without saying that, amid the usual scary-movie shenanigans, this cute, all-American small town will turn out to have some dark secrets lying beneath its surface. Political overtones are nothing new to the genre, but what  Scary Stories  does so well is in psychologically connecting all these elements — the election, the war, and the racism — with the sense that horror and murder are self-generating phenomena in a world without justice. This also connects the film to our present-day reality: Without giving too much away, a climactic set piece that seems to take place in two different timelines, each feeding the other, suggests that the crimes of the past reverberate and reoccur throughout the ages. It’s like Goosebumps meets Chinatown .

That may also be the picture’s one big shortcoming, however. Øvredal and his team do such a good job incorporating these sociopolitical overtones into the bread-and-butter genre mechanics of their overall plot that you may find yourself wanting more — more, at least, than the generic finale and the obligatory setup for a sequel that we do get. Is it highly odd or highly appropriate that a movie all about the poisonous power of unresolved stories would turn out to be a little unresolved itself?

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Metacritic reviews

Scary stories to tell in the dark.

• 80 IGN Rosie Knight IGN Rosie Knight The fun and frightful Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark will introduce a new generation to the joy of being scared.
• 80 ScreenCrush Matt Singer ScreenCrush Matt Singer Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is drenched with symbolism and layered with ideas about lost innocence and the power of stories — and the power of creating something that resonates with an audience for years and years. I suspect this movie will do exactly that.
• 75 TheWrap Monica Castillo TheWrap Monica Castillo True to its word, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark delivers an entrancing thriller that explores the power of narratives with a few screams to boot.
• 75 Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips The movie’s good even when it goes in too many directions at once, because it gets the kids right.
• 63 The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Brad Wheeler The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Brad Wheeler At times the film seems like a horrifying Nancy Drew story or a more sophisticated Scooby-Doo episode without the dog and with a face full of spiders.
• 60 The New York Times Ben Kenigsberg The New York Times Ben Kenigsberg Whether it’s the scene-setting blast of Donovan (“Zodiac”), the low-height Steadicam work (“The Shining”), the red-suffused hallways (David Lynch) or “Night of the Living Dead” playing at a drive-in, the movie takes from the best.
• 60 New York Magazine (Vulture) Bilge Ebiri New York Magazine (Vulture) Bilge Ebiri There is absolutely nothing original in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which just goes to show that you don’t need originality to be effective.
• 58 IndieWire David Ehrlich IndieWire David Ehrlich A movie that’s scary enough to get under your skin, but not scary enough to stay there.
• 50 The Hollywood Reporter Keith Uhlich The Hollywood Reporter Keith Uhlich All of these beasties are "scary." Though they'd be much more so if they felt less like franchisable IP and more like fervent expressions of the ills of the eras on which the film aims to comment.
• 40 Variety Owen Gleiberman Variety Owen Gleiberman The emotions of the stories have been lost. We could be watching the standard ghoulish CGI effects that take place in any horror movie of the week.
• See all 33 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

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Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark Review

23 Aug 2019

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Like Goosebumps but chillier, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark anthologies served up horror to American pre-teens during the ’80s, their urban legend and folklore-inspired short stories featuring twisted monsters and monstrous twists. Considered too strong for smaller kids, they earned a certain notoriety in the States, thanks mainly to the surprisingly disturbing illustrations by Stephen Gammell, and still boast a strong, culty fanbase.

Also like Goosebumps , Hollywood has, perhaps belatedly, spawned a culty-fanbase-serving movie adaptation which, rather than risking an omnibus approach, does its best to cram a ‘greatest shocks’ collection of the author’s creations into a vaguely plotted framing device. But where R.L. Stine’s oeuvre allowed for a comical, Amblin-ish contemporary romp featuring Jack Black as the writer himself, this collaboration between Troll Hunter director André Øvredal and producer/co-writer Guillermo del Toro is located in the late ’60s, dials up the scares beyond the reach of its original target audience, and recasts Schwartz as an archetypal ghost-girl with a soul-darkening grudge.

Heavy on jump scares, cobwebby corridors and CGI-assisted fiends, Øvredal and del Toro revel in the genre’s bloody heartland, and don’t seem too fussed about trying anything new. There is a satirical sideshow which parallels the diabolical supernatural goings-on with the election of Richard Nixon and the escalation of Vietnam, but its relevance isn’t as clear as, say, the use of Reagan’s Cold War rhetoric in Matt Reeves ’ Let Me In .

While the central story is frustratingly flimsy, Scary Stories does at least deliver on the set-pieces.

While the central story is frustratingly flimsy, tugging its lightly sketched teen protagonists in unconvincing but plot-necessary directions, Scary Stories does at least deliver on the set-pieces. Most effective is the one inspired by ‘The Red Spot’, in which a zit skin-crawlingly swells into an erupting arachnid nest. Another, meanwhile, brings one of Gammell’s most distressing drawings (from ‘The Dream’) to life: a corpulent, smiling spectre, shuffling ever closer to her victim along red-lit hospital corridors.

The problem is, each story-based sequence launches with hardly any context, which will leave those unfamiliar with Schwartz’s work, or the tales much of it is based on, feeling a little nonplussed. If you’ve not read ‘Me Tie Dough-ty Walker!’ for example, the dog-and-chimney build up to its contorting monster’s arrival will be more of a head-scratcher than a backbone-shiverer.

Beyond this, Zoe Colletti thankfully lends some emotive weight as the abandonment-issue-suffering Stella, whose book-burglary sets the deadly story-weaving events in motion. And her quest to put an end to ghost-girl Sarah’s terror-writing requires the unravelling of an intriguing little mystery, which will feel familiar to fans of del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and Crimson Peak . But you still can’t help feeling that, despite its episodic shock treats, this storybook would really have benefited from having a stronger spine.

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Tag: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

As directed by Trollhunter ’s Andre Ovredal from a screenplay co-credited to Guillermo del Toro, Scary Stories boasts a superior sense of atmosphere that effectively recreates 1968 without going overboard in its nostalgia-mining. TV news images of LBJ and Nixon defending Vietnam policy are intended to draw parallels to today but political commentary isn’t the film’s forte. A better call-back to the era is the recreation of a Pennsylvania drive-in, where the film’s quartet of protagonists hide out from a bully after their Halloween prank goes a little too right.

Inside the crumbling, gothic mansion, Stella recounts its tragic past – how the disfigured daughter of the inhabitants, Sarah Bellows, was kept locked in a dungeon until she was taken away to an asylum, where she died. Now, it’s said, her spirit haunts the big house’s walls and if you hear her voice and ask her to tell you a story, it’s the last story you’ll ever hear. Stella finds Sarah’s book of creepy tales and takes it with her when she and the others escape a trap set by Tommy. One-by-one, everyone who visited the house becomes the subject of new stories that write themselves in red ink on the pages of the book that Stella can’t return or destroy.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t merely fail to stick the ending, it flubs it entirely. Is that all there is? Really? For a moment, about ten minutes before the end credits began, I thought Scary Stories was going to go in a really dark, Jacob’s Ladder kind of direction – something daring, nihilistic, and clever. The movie hints at it (note the scene with the eyeglasses) but never quite goes there. It chickens out. When I realized that it was opting for the safer conclusion, I felt deflated. Those who don’t like movies with depressing endings may applaud Scary Stories ’ decision but I wish it hadn’t teased something much more audacious.

It’s fair to argue that Scary Stories deserves accolades because it bucks the usual horror movie trends by giving us all the clichés while managing not to seem clichéd. The genre tropes are all alive and well and Scary Stories delivers them with élan but the dispiriting ending hangs over everything like a pall. Still, putting aside the final fifteen minutes, Ovredal gives us an engaging batch of campfire stories told from a fresh perspective, and that’s worth something in the stale world of PG-13 horror.

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Guillermo del Toro came up with the screen story for 'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,' a lackluster adaptation of Alvin Schwartz's popular children's horror books.

By Keith Uhlich

Keith Uhlich

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The late author Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series — three books in total, each comprised of between 25 and 29 tales that mostly run a page or two — have captivated children since the first volume’s publication in 1981. They’ve also, due to their macabre subject matter and eerie illustrations by Stephen Gammell, drawn ire from prudish adults. Kids are made of sterner stuff than grown-ups give them credit for, and what’s fun about Scary Stories is how Schwartz encourages his readers to face the gruesome and fearful aspects of life head on (or toe off, if we go by one of the most famous tales).

This big-screen adaptation of the books — which plays out, not so elegantly, as the first part of a trilogy — boasts Guillermo del Toro as producer and story writer. Though Trollhunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe helmer André Øvredal competently handles directorial duties, del Toro’s fingerprints are all over the final product, for better and for worse.

Release date: Aug 09, 2019

The cleverest conceit is to give the “stories” themselves their own origin. They’re the product of a vengeful spirit named Sarah Bellows (Kathleen Pollard), who writes them in blood within a cursed tome. If you’re the subject of the tale, your doom is assured. As one of our petrified protagonists notes, “The book reads you!”

Less clever is the decision to set the film in small-town America circa 1968, just before the election of Richard Nixon. Introvert teenager/budding writer Stella Nichols (Zoe Margaret Colletti) and her friends Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur) may be enjoying their last high school Halloween together, in addition to awakening Sarah Bellows’ seemingly evil spirit in the local haunted house. But the world around them is on fire: Nixon posters are defaced with swastikas (nothing contemporaneously relevant about that!), Vietnam is raging and the young Hispanic teen, Ramón Morales (Michael Garza), who joins this little group by chance gets some racist stares and taunts thrown at him by both the the town bully (Austin Abrams) and the local police chief (Gil Bellows).

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Comic-con: guillermo del toro "trying to keep physical effects alive" with 'scary stories to tell in the dark'.

It’s all rather ineffective window dressing (conspicuously straining for political relevance), though give del Toro credit for at least mentioning ‘Nam where Quentin Tarantino cheekily and recklessly effaced it from his own 1960s head trip, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Copious demerits to Scary Stories, however, for setting a scene at a drive-in showing Night of the Living Dead (1968) and reformatting that film’s 1.37 aspect ratio to a modern-era friendly 1.78. Sacrilege! We’ll call the needle-dropping of “Season of the Witch” by Donovan (and its end-credits cover by Lana Del Rey ) a draw.

So how about the monsters? They’re alright — very much in keeping with del Toro’s fresh-from-the-pages-of-my-sketchbook! ethos. You can practically see the impassioned pencil shadings in a fleshy ghoul like the Pale Lady, who slowly stalks the red-lit hallways of a hospital before she hugs her victim to death. A demonic scarecrow, the book series’ own Toe Monster and a festering zit that houses a cluster of spiders also figure into the frights. And then there’s the Jangly Man — creepy kin to the towering Pale Man from del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), with the added benefit of being able to dismember and reconstruct himself at will.

All of these beasties are “scary.” Though they’d be much more so if they felt less like franchisable IP and more like fervent expressions of the ills of the eras on which the film aims to comment.

Production companies: 1212 Entertainment, CBS Films, Double Dare You (DDY), Entertainment One, Sean Daniel Company Distributor: Lionsgate Cast: Zoe Margaret Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Austin Abrams, Kathleen Pollard Director: André Øvredal Screenplay: Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman Story:  Guillermo del Toro,  Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton Based on the novel by: Alvin Schwartz Executive producers: Roberto Grande, Joshua Long Producers: Jason F. Brown, J. Miles Dale, Sean Daniel, Guillermo del Toro, Elizabeth Grave Music: Marco Beltrami, Anna Drubich Cinematography: Roman Osin Editing: Patrick Larsgaard Casting: Rich Delia Production design: David Brisbin Set decoration: Patricia Larman Costume design: Ruth Myers

Rated PG-13, 111 minutes

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45 Scariest Horror Movies That Are Too Disturbing to Re-Watch

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Content Warning: The following article contains discussions of graphic violence, animal cruelty, sexual assault, and rape. Everybody loves a good scare, as the undying popularity of horror movies continues to prove. From unexpected jump scares and eerie atmosphere, to terrifying creatures and supernatural occurrences, a lot of fun can be had with the genre. However, these films aren’t always meant to be a pleasant experience, and there are some horror movies that are actually scary and truly disturbing and twisted that even the most seasoned enthusiast would struggle to sit through.

Whether it’s due to graphic violence, excessive gore, controversial subject matter, or unsettling imagery, these movies are hard to unsee. The scariest horror movies will definitely have viewers questioning the filmmaker's intentions and leave them with no desire to revisit them in the near future. These most disturbing horror movies in cinematic history are full of controversial plots and genuinely nightmare-inducing sequences, which often end up becoming hot topics of discussion among fans and critics alike. Feel good family fun, this certainly is not.

45 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer' (2017)

Directed by yorgos lanthimos.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for his unique movies, like The Favourite and Poor Things , which usually feature an offbeat tone, quirky characters, and deadpan delivery. However, the director’s darkest film to date is the horror-thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer , which still retains the director’s signature elements, but in a far more sinister manner. Colin Farrell plays Steven Murphy, a wealthy surgeon and family man who has a seemingly perfect life.

When Steven meets the strange and awkward teen Martin ( Barry Keoghan ), he takes him under his wing. Martin then infiltrates his family home, and violent and unsettling occurrences begin to take place. While The Killing of a Sacred Deer isn’t as graphic as some traditional horror movies, it has an eerie and uncomfortable tone that is hard to stomach , making for an uncomfortable viewing experience.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

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44 'The Exorcist' (1973)

Directed by william friedkin.

Arguably the most iconic demonic possession horror movie , The Exorcist is a classic within the genre, and influenced a whole new generation of horror movies. The film follows Regan ( Linda Blair ), a young girl who becomes possessed by a demonic entity, and her mother, Chris ( Ellen Burstyn ), who enlists the help of two priests to save her.

At the time of release, The Exorcist was the scariest horror movie audiences had ever seen , with viewers even fainting. While some of the film’s scare factor has become outdated thanks to the evolution of filmmaking and effects, and almost seems tame compared to other movies, The Exorcist is still scarier than some horror movies released today. It is striking and unnerving, with visceral imagery that has become legendary in the horror pantheon.

The Exorcist

43 'barbarian' (2022), directed by zach cregger.

Barbarian is one of the most bonkers horror movies to hit screens in recent memory. On the surface, it seems like your standard creepy horror flick. A woman named Tara ( Georgina Campbell ) books an Airbnb, only to find it has been double-booked by a mysterious stranger named Keith ( Bill Skarsgård ). Just when you think you know where the narrative is going, Barbarian flips the script and goes to a totally unexpected and wild place .

The film’s second half is completely demented and gross, but it does not reach the disturbing level of some of the higher-ranked films on this list due to its unexpected humor and self-awareness. Barbarian is a totally wild and unpredictable ride that will have viewers questioning what it is they just witnessed.

42 'The Conjuring' (2013)

Directed by james wan.

James Wan is one of the most popular horror directors working in the industry today, responsible for hits like Saw and Insidious . However, it was his 2013 film The Conjuring that reinvigorated the horror genre for the first time in years, giving it new life. Based on true events (what everybody wants to hear at the start of a horror movie), the film follows paranormal investigators Ed ( Patrick Wilson ) and Lorraine Warren ( Vera Farmiga ), who help a family being terrorized by a supernatural presence.

Along with a genuinely intriguing story and fleshed-out characters, The Conjuring brought back old-school scares in a way that remains fresh and exciting. The film also introduced fans to the now infamous Annabelle doll , and its success would go on to launch a franchise.

The Conjuring

41 'the perfection' (2018), directed by richard shepard.

Netflix has released a slew of original horror films, but one that stands out (and is easily underrated) is The Perfection , starring Get Out and M3GAN ’s Allison Williams . Williams plays troubled music prodigy Charlotte, who returns to her prestigious music school to find that she has been replaced by new star pupil Lizzie ( Logan Browning ).

The pair are sent down a sinister path there is no returning from, embarking on the ultimate revenge plot. While viewers may initially make comparisons to a rivalry narrative like Black Swan , it turns out The Perfection is much more David Cronenberg's body horror style . The film takes big swings and risks, featuring some incredibly repulsive and striking imagery that will leave you squirming.

The Perfection

40 'funny games' (1997), directed by michael haneke.

Despite not technically being a horror movie, Michael Haneke ’s original Funny Games is one of the most terrifying non-horror films of all time , and is truly difficult to stomach. The psychological thriller follows two young men ( Arno Frisch and Frank Giering ) who hold a family hostage in their lakeside vacation home. They abuse and force them to play sadistic games for their own sick entertainment.

The psychotic Paul (Firsch) and Peter (Giering) often break the fourth wall throughout the film, directly addressing the audience. The pair tease the viewers, asking them moral questions and therefore making them feel complicit by simply watching the torture play out on screen. It’s an effective narrative technique that makes the whole viewing experience much harder to digest. By the end of Funny Games , audiences will be asking themselves what exactly they got out of watching something so horrid.

Funny Games (1997)

39 'deliver us from evil' (2014), directed by scott derrickson.

While there are definitely better exorcism films out there than Scott Derrickson ’s Deliver Us from Evil , there is no denying that it leaves you feeling unsettled and frightened. Eric Bana plays Ralph, a police officer who teams up with Mendoza ( Édgar Ramírez ), a priest, to combat possessions that are wreaking havoc on New York City.

From gruesome corpses to otherworldly demons, Deliver Us from Evil features some truly grotesque and scarring imagery that leaves an impact . Its religious themes are also extremely dark and disturbing, but thanks to its cop drama element and moments of levity, it is not the scariest movie on this list. However, the film is still a gnarly and bleak horror outing that is not for the faint of heart.

Deliver Us from Evil

38 '[rec]' (2007), directed by paco plaza and jaume balagueró.

The use of found-footage filmmaking is extremely popular within the horror genre, thanks to the success of films like The Blair Witch Project . One of the most effective and frightening uses of the stylistic technique can be seen in the Spanish horror film [Rec] . Entirely using found footage, it depicts a television reporter ( Manuela Velasco ) and her cameraman ( Pablo Rosso ), who follow emergency workers into a dark apartment building.

There is a virus outbreak, trapping everybody inside and slowly turning people into vicious cannibals. The found-footage presentation makes [Rec] feel terrifyingly authentic and intimate, fully immersing the viewer in a very realistic manner. The gruesome effects, convincing acting, and production elements make it feel as if you are watching a real TV report, and the film’s bleak ending will leave viewers feeling extremely unsettled.

Rent on Amazon

37 'Host' (2020)

Directed by rob savage.

We have all become far too familiar with Zoom and communicating remotely through work meetings and social catch-ups during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, director Rob Savage capitalized on the popularity of the application (and social circumstances) to make Host , a film that proves you don’t need a big budget to make something terrifying .

Filmed entirely through webcams and set on a computer screen, a group of friends perform an online seance and accidentally invite a demonic presence into their homes. Savage uses simple tricks to conjure up genuinely nasty scares during a heart-pounding runtime of just under an hour. Host is a brilliant technical experiment, and Zoom meetings will never be the same again.

36 'The Descent' (2005)

Directed by neil marshall.

One of the most terrifying and claustrophobic movies ever made , The Descent is a lean and nasty horror experience . The film follows a group of friends on a cave expedition, where they become trapped inside and are hunted by bloodthirsty creatures. The film is a back-to-basics horror thriller, utilizing the isolation and limited space of its setting for some truly horrific and visceral sequences.

It starts with a slow-burn build and then releases full carnage for its remaining runtime. The suffocating atmosphere of the caves and the situation makes this film so uncomfortable and scary to watch, as it plays on people’s real-life fears of closed and small spaces. The Descent ’s ending is also incredibly grim, leaving viewers with a sense of hopelessness as the credits roll.

The Descent

Watch on Amazon Prime

35 'Veronica' (2017)

Directed by paco plaza.

Commonly referred to as one of the scariest movies on Netflix , Veronica is full of well-executed scares and demonic imagery that will haunt audiences. During a solar eclipse, a teenage girl ( Sandra Escacena ) uses an Ouija board with her friends to summon her father. Afterward, she becomes plagued by evil forces.

Veronica features all the unease and spookiness of any possession film , but what really makes it so memorable and frightening is the fact that it is loosely based on a true story. It takes inspiration from the Vallecas case, where a young girl similarly used the board to contact a loved one, and died soon after. The movie has a sense of realism that makes it incredibly creepy and difficult to sit through.

Verónica (2017)

Madrid, 1991. A teen girl finds herself besieged by an evil supernatural force after she played Ouija with two classmates.

Watch on Netflix

34 'The Hills Have Eyes' (2006)

Directed by alexandre aja.

While the 1977 version of The Hills Have Eyes is definitely a horror classic, its 2006 remake is certainly more effective and brutal, and might even be a better version. The film follows a family traveling to California to celebrate an anniversary, but things turn nightmarish when they are captured by mutated cannibals.

The Hills Have Eyes features extreme gore and repulsive elements like animal cruelty and sexual assault , with certain scenes that are particularly hard to stomach. It will make your skin crawl and have you most likely avoiding any kind of road trips in the near future. The mutant cannibals, and the acts they commit, are absolutely horrific. While it’s a well-made horror film that certainly leaves a mark, it is equally traumatizing.

Rent on Apple TV

33 'Sinister' (2012)

Considered by many to be the scariest modern horror film of all time, Sinister is… well, pretty darn sinister. Ethan Hawke plays Ellison Oswald, a true crime non-fiction crime writer who moves his family into a house where gruesome murders took place. Desperate for inspiration for his work, he delves into who may have been responsible for those murders, but his research reveals horrifying discoveries.

The film has a simple plot but is executed in a way that will be lodged in your subconscious for a long time. The Super-8 tapes Hawke’s character stumbles upon featuring various murders are already uneasy to watch , but it’s the demonic face that keeps popping up in each of them that is the stuff of nightmares. Its terrible twist has also become well-known among horror fans, who likely wish they could watch it all again for the first time.

32 'Hereditary' (2018)

Directed by ari aster.

Director Ari Aster has cemented himself as a profound and fresh new voice in horror over the last few years, as exhibited with his debut Hereditary . The film follows a grief-stricken family after the death of their matriarch, as they discover sinister ancestral secrets through supernatural disturbances.

The scariest movie ever from A24's collection, Aster’s film is bleak and utterly hopeless, littered with unnatural and explicit imagery among its unnerving ambiance. Toni Collette ’s performance is incredibly chilling , and one particular scene involving a nut allergy takes an abhorrent turn that viewers will not soon forget. That one scene has likely shocked and terrified viewers into never seeing the film again. Dark, dark stuff.

31 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' (1974)

Directed by tobe hooper.

Many argue that modern horror films are always scarier, but that’s not the case when it comes to 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre . The film sees Leatherface and his cannibal family hunt down a group of unsuspecting hitchhikers for the first time, with mean and bloody results.

Thanks to its balance of sheer dread and extreme gore, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was banned in several countries when first released, and is still considered one of the scariest movies of all time to this day . Disgusting and remarkably impressive for its time, it is certainly not for the faint of heart. Although later entries in the Texas Chain Saw Massacre haven't managed to reach the impressive heights of the first, there's still something to be said for the way the 1974 film established an enduring franchise beloved among horror fans.

Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Watch on Peacock

30 'Goodnight Mommy' (2014)

Directed by veronika franz and severin fiala.

Goodnight Mommy is a slow-burn psychological horror film that is drenched in dread from start to finish. It follows twin brothers Elias ( Elias Schwarz ) and Lukas ( Lukas Schwarz ), who begin to suspect the identity of their mother ( Susanne Wuest ) when she comes home covered in bandages after facial reconstructive surgery.

Always cited among the scary horror movies, Goodnight Mommy gets under your skin with its creepy atmosphere and delicate pace but will have viewers squirming during its icky and excessive torture scenes, where the torture is being carried out by children. It goes to extremely dark and shocking places and knows how to use its twisted mother-child relationship to its full advantage, subverting expectations of what such a connection should look like.

Watch on Tubi

29 'The Innocents' (2021)

Directed by eskil vogt.

If you’ve seen any of their films, you’d know the Nordic always nail atmospheric horror and use it to create really scary movies. Pair that with creepy kids carrying out sadistic acts, and you’ve got yourself some pretty uncomfortable viewing. The Innocents takes these elements to create an understated yet relentlessly haunting film.

During a bright Nordic summer, a group of kids experiment with their newfound powers as things take a dark turn. The violence and cruelty on display (including towards animals) in The Innocents are made all the more difficult to stomach because it is being carried out by children. The characters who are supposed to be innocent due to their age commit unspeakable acts without remorse, with each one worse than the last. Viewer discretion is advised.

Watch on Shudder

28 'Terrifier 2' (2022)

Directed by damien leone.

The Terrifier movies are some of the most controversial in the horror genre, and sequel Terrifier 2 outdoes its predecessor in every way possible. This time round, Art the Clown ( David Howard Thornton ) is resurrected by an evil entity, and returns to the town of Miles County to terrorize Sienna ( Lauren LaVera ) and her brother Jonathan ( Elliot Fullman ).

Almost an hour longer than the original film, Terrifier 2 goes all out in the gore and shock department . Audiences reportedly vomited and fainted while watching the film, which includes detailed and nausea-inducing kills and torture from Terrfier 's main villain . While it is undoubtedly difficult to watch, hardcore fans of the slasher genre responded positively to the film, as it received rave reviews and performed surprisingly well at the box office.

Terrifier 2

27 'tusk' (2014), directed by kevin smith.

When one thinks of most Kevin Smith movies , buddy comedies and low-budget cult classics usually come to mind. However, what doesn’t come to mind is twisted body horror, which is exactly what Smith goes for in 2014’s Tusk . Justin Long plays an arrogant podcaster who travels to Canada to interview a famous recluse ( Michael Parks ) who has a strange obsession with walruses.

The next day, Wallace (Long) wakes up to discover that Howe (Parks) plans to surgically transform him into a walrus. While retaining certain comedic elements that the director is known for (you’d have to with such an absurd plot), Smith truly pushes the boundaries of visual imagery in a grotesque and unnatural way . The practical effects used to turn Long into a human walrus are realistically disgusting, and will likely leave a lasting effect.

26 'Mother!' (2017)

Directed by darren aronofsky.

One of the most polarizing movies of all time , director Darren Aronofsky 's Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence as the titular protagonist, who lives with Him ( Javier Bardem ) in a Victorian mansion in the countryside. When unexpected guests arrive one after the other, chaos ensues as Mother is caught in a confusing and terrifying turn of events.

Unsettling from start to finish, the film relies heavily on allegory, extreme sound design, and shaky camera work to convey its metaphorical story. This same metaphorical approach is what has made it so divisive among fans and critics alike, who can't agree about whether it's a brilliant masterpiece or a jumbled mess of a film. It escalates in an unexpected and genuinely frightening way and reaches an explosive conclusion that will leave viewers perturbed and never wanting to revisit Mother! again .

Mother! (2017)