scary stories to tell in the dark cast august

Scary stories to tell in the dark cast august movie#
Scary stories to tell in the dark cast august series#

This makes them far more contemporary and relatable than their period setting suggests. These are not teenagers rushing headlong into a heady 60’s of abandonment, if anything they are anxious and rooted by their circumstances. Her friend Auggie (Gabriel Rush) is a middle-aged man in a young guy’s body, while mysterious stranger Ramon (Michael Garza) turns out to be a draft dodger – avoiding the senseless Vietnam conflict that killed his brother. Stella is haunted by her mother’s abandonment, perhaps to explore the big city world offered by the promise of the 60’s. Schwartz’s original book takes place at the tail end of the 1960’s, a decade in which the counter-cultural revolution swept its way across the Western world, particularly the United States, though it seems to have passed Mill Valley, Pennsylvania by.

Scary stories to tell in the dark cast august series#

While Andre Ovredal’s adaptation of the children’s book series by Alvin Schwartz is primarily concerned with the terrifying events swirling around bookish teenager Stella (Zoe Colletti) and her friends as they are haunted by the murderous stories of a tormented spirit, the story undulates with the ominous spectre of Nixon’s election looming over small-town America, the kind of latent 1950’s hangover, Midwestern town that wouldn’t go amiss in the world of Stephen King. Just after Halloween, always a night popular with horror films as a setting, in 1968 saw election night of the next President of the United States, a night in which Richard Nixon finally was elevated to the position of Commander-in-Chief. The real boogeyman is perhaps Nixon, who lurks on television screens and campaign posters.Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a film about the power of narrative, hence why much of the action takes place on a key night in 1968.

Scary stories to tell in the dark cast august movie#

The resolution of the supernatural horror that dominates the movie is disrupted by a bigger, real world horror that the two teenagers are powerless over. Viewers might expect some realization of the burgeoning romance between he and Stella after the two finally manage to stop Sarah, but instead the following scene shows Ramon getting on a bus, bound for the Army. It’s eventually revealed that Ramon is running from the draft, afraid of dying in the war like his brother. In the opening scene, there’s a shot of some pro-Nixon posters that have been vandalized with swastikas, and later someone wonders how they can trust a candidate nicknamed Tricky Dick.

There’s never much doubt about the stance the film takes toward these events. Outside of Mill Valley and the supernatural powers being visited upon it, the Vietnam War is raging, and Richard Nixon is being elected president. There’s also a strain of political commentary in “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” that del Toro might be responsible for, given his tendency to use horror to such ends in the past. ‘Lamb’ Is a Classic A24 Horror Movie That Leaves Viewers Feeling Pensive As the group of friends begin to get picked off, the rest race to find an answer, or else become another chapter in Sarah’s sinister book. But when new stories begin to appear in the book, featuring those who were in the Bellows’ mansion Halloween night, it’s clear that something has been awakened.

Nothing seems to happen, and the group soon heads home. Of course, Stella and Ramon find Sara’s basement room and her fabled book of stories. The children who heard her stories whispered through the walls of the house mysteriously died shortly after, and supposedly those bold enough to request a story while in the house could still get one. The story goes that the Bellows’ youngest daughter, Sarah, was tormented and kept in the basement, and eventually turned to the dark arts. The decrepit mansion once belonged to the Bellows, the wealthy family whose mill helped to establish Mill Valley. The two hit it off, and Ramon eagerly agrees when Stella invites him to tour the local haunted house. The car’s owner is an out-of-towner named Ramon (Michael Garza), who’s about Stella’s age and shares her affinity for all things spooky. When the prank goes a little too well, the three are forced to flee from the enraged jocks, eventually taking shelter in a stranger’s car at the local drive-in.