 Welcome to One Take, I'm Gil and today we'll be discussing the new horror film, Scary Stories to Tell Him the Dark. I'll start off with my high level thoughts on the movie and then give you a warning before I dive into spoilers in case you haven't seen the movie yet. This movie was produced by Guillermo del Toro and it's based off the horror anthology book series that was geared towards children. Now I never read that book series so I didn't have any attachment to this material going into the movie and honestly I went in with fairly low expectations just expecting a fun horror movie. Now the first 20 minutes or so I started to think the movie might actually be pretty great because I'm a fan of horror anthology films but I'm especially a fan if they find a clever way to have good interconnectivity between the different stories that are going on and we saw flashes of that throughout this movie. I also thought that all of the actors were doing a solid job. The kids in the movie some of them felt a little cliched but they were good enough that I was looking forward to getting to know those characters. I especially want to shout out the actor Austin Zajur who I thought was hilarious in this movie and did a great job. I mentioned that I was looking forward to getting to know these characters but unfortunately I don't feel like we ever really got to do that. The movie basically turned into a series of short horror films. Now each of those horror films were a different flavor. They were all really well done. Each of them was super creepy and did a great job of making you feel tense throughout. Unfortunately the story in between those short horror films became pretty sloppy, pre-run of the mill and overall pretty boring. It felt like playing a great video game that's interrupted every once in a while by long boring cutscenes. This was especially frustrating because of how well done the horror elements were and those flashes of greatness I felt like I saw early on in the movie. I'd also add that the movie takes place in the 60s and that's something I didn't know going in and I was intrigued by it when the movie at the beginning flashes that date and you find out that we're in the late 60s. But ultimately the fact that this movie took place in the past and that it was a period piece felt shoehorned in. It felt to me like the writers were putting this movie together and realized that modern technology kept getting in the way. For example, when the kids go to investigate what's going on the writers wanted those kids to have to go to the library and go to different places to research this, whereas if it took place today they would just go to Google and that would probably be a much more boring scene. So they decided to make it take place in the 60s but then realized that the script really wasn't conveying that this took place back then. So every 10 to 15 minutes they have a character mentioned Richard Nixon. In the background of this movie we see TVs, we hear the radio that this is all sort of taking place during Nixon's election and it kind of felt like they were trying to turn this into some sort of political commentary. But ultimately whatever that commentary was felt pretty weak and like I said before the political commentary felt shoehorned in and the 60s setting felt ultimately pretty pointless. So overall I'd say I went in with low expectations, I started to see greatness in this movie early on that unfortunately devolved into being just good, not great and ultimately especially as I thought back on the movie and how sloppy some of the storytelling was. I'd say the movie was pretty mediocre even though I did enjoy it. It was a fun horror movie and like I said the horror elements if you take them as basically short horror films were very well done. With that I think we're ready to jump into spoilers so here's your spoiler warning if you haven't seen the movie yet. Five, four, three, two, one. Like I said before the movie was pretty sloppy especially as I started to think back on it. The first example of that was the bully character Tommy. He seemed totally sober and lucid and then when he showed up at Sarah Bellow's house to lock the kids in the basement all of a sudden he was acting very bizarre. At first I wondered if he was maybe supernaturally possessed but then I realized he was drunk and that was confirmed a little later on when his mom asked him if he's drunk again. But I found myself wondering when did he get drunk? I don't think they showed him drinking at all. It felt like he was really pissed off, he wanted to go after those kids and I guess somewhere in that rage he stopped off at a liquor store, got really drunk and then showed up at the house. It just felt very weird and would have felt a lot more natural if we saw him drinking at any point during the movie. Then there was Chuck's older sister Ruth. She was the one who had the thousands of spiders explode out of her face. Once that happens the very next scene we see her getting put into an ambulance and then we hear Chuck say to his friends, my sister's gone and I turned to my brother and I said wait a minute she's dead. So I left that scene thinking okay I guess she's dead. It doesn't really feel like the characters are acting like she's dead. But then later on the cop character says to Chuck something along the lines of your sister's going to be in a psych war the rest of her life. So then I guess okay she's not dead she's just mentally snapped. And this whole time it sort of felt to me like the writers wanted her character to be killed but because this is somewhat aimed towards children they kind of pulled their punches a little bit. So it's vague language like my sister's gone and then okay you know what she's not dead she just lost her mind. But then at the end of the movie we see she's fine now. She has a scar on her cheek but she's no longer in the hospital so I guess she's okay but it's unclear why she's okay. My immediate thought would have been okay the defeated cerebello so everything's back to normal now. But Chuck, Augie and Tommy are still missing so I guess just luckily Ruth is fine now no really no explanation for it. Then there's Ramon part way through the movie we find out that he's a draft dodger and at the end of the movie he's accepted his fate and he's joined the army. That could have been an interesting character arc but it's unclear to me why Ramon is now okay joining the army. I guess it's because he defeated the jangly man and maybe he's no longer afraid but that's me kind of filling in the blanks that the movie didn't. We also have kids disappearing and dying left and right but it sort of feels like the surrounding characters aren't reacting to that in an emotionally realistic way or in a logistically realistic way because no one seems to be investigating or asking too many questions. For example, why was the scarecrow wearing Tommy's clothes the kid who just disappeared? What were the doctor's reactions to Ruth's face having exploded and I'm assuming there's gotta be some physical evidence of the fact that thousands of spiders crawled out of her face. The movie also goes out of its way multiple times to remind us that Augie's parents are out of town so I guess that explains why we're not seeing Vam or anyone else really react to the fact that he disappeared but the movie doesn't go out of its way to explain where Chuck's parents are. In fact at the end of the movie when Ruth, Chuck's older sister, is back we see her in the car with Stella and Stella's dad. So my immediate reaction to that was oh yeah her parents are gone so I guess she's going to live with Stella now but then it occurred to me wait why are her parents gone? We never saw anything happen to Chuck's parents he just disappeared and there was really no reaction from anybody and then Ruth decides to go live with Stella and her dad I guess. It was very unclear what happened to Chuck's parents if anything. Anyway I feel like I'm saying a lot of bad things about this movie but like I said up front there are some things I genuinely enjoyed especially the horror elements. A couple that I'd shout out first the pale lady although she felt a little repetitive just in the character no matter which direction they run they see her standing there felt a lot like Tommy running through the cornfield and no matter which direction he goes he sees Harold the Scarecrow but the character design for the pale lady was something very unusual not something I felt like I'd seen before in a horror movie. It was also really interesting the way that she had that big smile and the way she defeated Chuck was by giving him a big hug almost as if she thought she was doing something good for him and hey we don't see where Chuck ends up maybe living inside the pale ladies belly is awesome who knows. I also thought the jangly man was great not just the mechanic of his body parts falling down the chimney and then coming together. It was also really the only time we saw one of the characters fight back against one of these creatures and really interact with them especially where Ramon crashes the car and pins the jangly man between the car and the truck all that stuff was great. Personally when the jangly man first showed up before he put himself back together I would have loved to have seen what happened if the cop just grabbed the torso and ran away before the jangly man could reconstruct himself but the cops in this movie were kind of useless so I guess there was really no chance of that happening. I also like the sort of time travel elements for example when they're listening to the recording of Sarah Bellow being electrocuted and then at the end of it she starts talking to them about what was happening to Chuck in that moment that was really cool. When Stell's glasses fell off in that kind of past sequence and showed up in the present where Ramon finds them all dusty all that stuff was pretty interesting even though they didn't ultimately do a lot with it. There were also parts of this movie where I felt Guillermo del Toro's presence. Now I don't know how creatively involved he actually was in this movie but I thought I saw flashes of him in the character design and in the emotional arc for Sarah Bellow. The fact that ultimately she wasn't just some horrific creature but was a victim and the way to defeat her was by sympathizing with her and ultimately telling her story. Elements of that story were pretty effective. I mentioned the recording earlier where you hear her as a child being electrocuted and tortured by her family. I really felt for her in that scene and it was really effective. Unfortunately the climax of her story where Stella is interacting with her and you see Sarah start to cry and let go of her rage unfortunately that didn't work as well for me. I wanted to feel something but it felt like the culmination of an arc that wasn't really there. It felt like the ending to a Guillermo del Toro movie that we didn't see. If the movie were a little less sloppy and the movie did a better job of making us care about the characters especially if it made us care about the Sarah Bellow character then that ending could have been a lot more effective and a lot more impactful. So like I said overall I went into this movie with pretty low expectations just looking for a fun horror movie and I was pleasantly surprised at the beginning. I thought this was going to be a great above average horror film but unfortunately the characters ended up being pretty underdeveloped and the biggest flaw of this movie was how sloppy the storytelling got in between the great horror moments. So I really wouldn't recommend this movie unless you're just in the mood for something scary maybe it's Halloween and you've already watched all the classics over and over and you need something new. This will give you your horror fix but otherwise I thought it was pretty mediocre and not a strong recommend from me. Anyway leave a comment on this video and tell us what you thought of scary stories to tell in the dark. Am I asking too many questions? Am I being too nitpicky? Let me know in the comments and if you enjoyed this video make sure to like it and subscribe to our channel plus hit that little bell icon so you get notifications whenever we make more videos like this one. Thanks for watching.