WHAT’S IT ABOUT
It’s l968 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 to me.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
Right from the start, this movie feels like a scarier (and more adult) version of Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark (2010). Because of the similarities, I checked into it and found out why. Guillermo del Toro produced both films. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because he obviously learned from his mistakes. This time, he gave the movie a nostalgic feel by putting the stories in an earlier period. As this film begins, you get to know the town and its people but mainly the kids. It’s Halloween and this film waste no time introducing us to the bullies and racial problems of 1968. After that, the rest of the film concentrates on the main characters and a book they found containing stories the adults dismissed as writings of a crazy lady from long ago. The movie does a great job explaining the story of Sarah Bellows’s horrible life and the stories she would tell kids that wandered into the mansion she supposedly died in. This is when you realize this movie was made for a young audience. Everything is explained and then explained again. There’s never a point in this film where you feel lost or unsure about what’s happening. This also makes the story somewhat predictable. If you’ve seen other horror films, then you know the crazy stuff characters of this genre do that make them the next one to die. This time we’re dealing with high schoolers so the characters are even dumber. They took a book from an old mansion and now the spirit of Sarah Bellows is punishing everybody in town because of it. The stories in the book start to come to life and play out in the real world. As impressive as that sounds, it wasn’t executed right and therefore didn’t give it enough originality or drive to warrant a theatrical release. This is a PG-13 movie, and like its predecessors, it’s scary enough to give most kids nightmares and drive up night-light sales. As for the adults in the room, this movie will only get to an almost level of adult horror right before it brings any incident back down to a respectable level of kid scary. I did like the way each person, no matter if they deserved it or not, was targeted by evil. Presenting that kind of impartial determination to kill along with the non-standard ending gives this film a little more credibility than others aimed at young adults. If you must see it, go to the discount theater or matinee, paying full price would just be crazy.
OUR RATING – STORIES YOUR KIDS CAN TELL 6.5
Media
- Genre – Horror
- Street date
- Digital – October 22nd 2019
- DVD/Blu-Ray/4K – November 5th 2019
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size – 2.39:1
- Sound – English (Dolby TrueHD 5.1 sound)
- Subtitles – English SDH, French, Spanish
Extras
- “The Bellows Construct” Featurette
- “Creature from the Shadows” Featurette
- “Mood Reels” Featurette
- “Behind-the-Scenes Trailers: Set Visits” Featurette
- “Dark Tales” Featurette
- “Retro Horror” Featurette