In the summer of 2019, the creators of the horror film "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" invite fans to tickle their nerves to the cinema. The plot does not promise anything fundamentally new: an abandoned house, a terrible story of a girl Sarah and her mysterious book, which is found by a group of curious teenagers. In this premiere there will be no big actors' names, but the ideological inspirer and producer of the project was Guillermo del Toro, the director of Pan's Labyrinth and The Form of Water.
History of creation and plot
The plot of the film "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" is based on a series of children's books of the same name by writer Alvin Schwartz. The first part of the trilogy was released back in 1981, and the last - in 1991, shortly before the death of the author. Schwartz worked on each book for about a year, drawing inspiration for his stories from folklore stories, urban legends, and archives.
In addition to the creepy content, the first editions of the books are equipped with nightmarish, surreal illustrations by Stephen Gummell, for which they have repeatedly been criticized by outraged parents. Many are still convinced that such literature is not intended for children. There were cases when young readers experienced severe stress after getting acquainted with the works of Schwartz. In different parts of America, activists appealed to schools and libraries with demands to exclude these books from children's literature collections, but in most cases their requests were rejected.
However, in the wake of public outrage in the reprinted version of the illustration of Gammell, they tried to replace it with less shocking work by the artist Brett Helqvist. Then those readers who grew up on the old version of the books and considered the original images an integral part of "Scary stories to tell in the dark" spoke out against.
In 2013, the rights to the scandalous works were acquired by CBS Films, and in 2016 the development of this project was taken up by the famous director and Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro. True, his participation was limited to the functions of a screenwriter and producer, and the production of the film was entrusted to the Norwegian cinematographer Andre Ovredal, who specializes in the genre of horror.
The plot of the film will take viewers to America in 1968, or rather, to the quiet provincial town of Mill Valley. For generations, the abandoned mansion of the Bellows family has inspired fear and horror among the locals. Once upon a time in this gloomy house on the outskirts of the city lived a young girl Sarah. She told about her terrible fate and nightmarish secrets in a series of stories that one day end up in the hands of curious teenagers. However, reckless readers do not yet know that the dark stories and monsters mentioned by Sarah can at any time penetrate from the pages of the book into the real world.
Actors, Trailer, Premiere
Thriller "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" brought together a young cast on the set. Therefore, the names of its main stars are hardly familiar to most viewers: Zoe Colletti, Austin Zazhur, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Natalie Ganshorn. Perhaps the most famous of the young participants in the project can be called actor Austin Abrams, who previously played the role of Ron Anderson in the popular TV series The Walking Dead for two seasons.
The older generation stars in the film: Dean Norris, the star of Breaking Bad, Jill Bellows, who plays Tommy Williams in The Shawshank Redemption, and Lorraine Toussaint, star of the television drama Time Doesn't Wait. And the Spanish actor Javier Botet will appear on the screen in the form of one of the monsters that come to life.
Alvin Schwartz's books were adapted for a horror film script by a whole group of authors. Among them - Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, who came up with several parts of "Saw" - the popular horror franchise. As the city of Mill Valley, viewers will be shown the small Canadian city of St. Thomas, where filming took place for two months. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark has a budget of about $ 40 million.
To draw attention to the project, the first trailer was shown on February 3, 2019 during the broadcast of the American Football Super Bowl, and the video appeared in the public domain a month and a half later. The horror film will be released worldwide on August 9, 2019, in Russia it will start showing a day earlier - from August 8.
