This movie will always be about that scene from the trailer, the one where the girl pokes and prods at a massive blemish on her face, a white-headed pimple from which emerges a tiny waving spider leg.
*shriek*
Body horror to the max, a common urban legend, pure nightmare fuel. Yes, this movie was adapted from the popular children's books of the same name, that often dealt with such tales, the same kinds of tales we saw in those 70s large format comics, short stories that always give the main character a terrible lesson to learn. But how do you jam an anthological concept into a 1.5 hour movie, and keep the characters connected to it? One antagonist, multiple consequences loosely pulled together, is how.
Its the 60s and a bunch of teens are being tormented by bullies, they bump into a drifter named Ramón, and they all end up at the local haunted house. Inside the house they find the book, a book full of (you guess it) scary stories one tells in the dark. BUT, the hook is that NEW stories start appearing, ghostly fountain pen written, tales about the teens and the bullies themselves, stories that come .... TRUE !
With some help from the mind of Guillermo del Toro, the guy who did Troll Hunter does a movie that has some great ideas, but never really takes off. The premise is weak, and the idea waffles between the Bad Kids Being Punished, and... well, just about anyone being punished. Some of the monsters are scary, especially the fat, blobby "pale lady" (really, more a troll/hag creature than a human female) but for the most part, everything is dimmed down to the expectations of it as a kid's movie.
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