Scary Stories (from a Dark Allie)

It’s a big undertaking doing a new adaptation of a Stephen King novel, especially when the original was such a classic. And the original was long enough, but this is even longer. Sure, it’s split between two parts…but the original was a TV miniseries split between a few parts also, and this first part alone was OVER TWO HOURS.

But I have to give it credit where credit’s due. This movie is pretty scary, pretty interesting, and has some really fantastic performances by both the kids and by Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise.

(Spoiler warning, but also major content warning if you can’t deal with spiders or mentions thereof) Oh boy, THIS movie. This movie has haunted me since I first saw it probably more than 30 years ago. In fact, I’m pretty sure I had seen this even before my OWN scary spider incident…

I’m honestly not too sure how to write about this movie. Not because I didn’t like it, but because I did, and I don’t really have a clear explanation for why.

After how much I enjoyed Host, I was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately it was kind of a letdown.

This is a five-star movie for me, but I have to acknowledge it’s perhaps because of a few “superficial” things versus the movie itself. Like, it’s less than an hour long! You could barely call that a feature film! And most of the characters have British accents!

This was a better movie than the original Unfriended, and also not a direct sequel (which makes sense, as the original didn’t really leave room for a direct sequel). So this was better, but also almost a totally different kind of scary movie.

In fact, this one reminded me a lot of The Den (which might be kind of a spoiler already?), which isn’t a bad thing!

I think this was one of the first movies to be told entirely through computer screens and instant messaging and video chat. Conceptually, that’s really neat! I love that filmmakers are using technologies to their advantage to tell new stories and new kinds of stories!

But this one fell pretty flat for me, on a number of levels.

Sometimes I feel bad, like maybe the reason I didn’t like a movie is because I’m tired, or in a bad mood, or otherwise feeling things that are priming me to not like any movies. And I don’t really know how to tell the difference between my feelings about mediocre movies on those days versus “normal” days. I feel like it’s easy to tell if I REALLY like or REALLY dislike a movie…but sometimes it’s too difficult to decide between two or three stars.

This is kind of one of those days. And I’m sorry, Night Swim, but I just can’t give you that third star.

This movie was…not what I expected. And not in a great way. More in a “WTF did I just watch” kind of way.

Also, I feel kind of weird writing too much about it myself. If you’re interested, I suggest reading the plot summary on Wikipedia instead of watching the film?

This movie is so silly, and I loved every stupid, ridiculous minute of it. I watched this for a second time today, and I’m pretty sure I liked it even better than I did the first time around.

Since I’m pretty sure I’ll need to spoil a lot of this, I’ll start by saying that I absolutely recommend this movie to anyone who is wary of AI (or smart homes), social media influencers, AirBnBs, and…I don’t know, college undergraduates who all look wayyyy too pretty to be part of a “Nerd Herd”?

This movie didn’t quite land for me. There was a lot about it that I liked, but the horror part of it was…lacking. Actually, there was quite a bit lacking. So it didn’t end up a terrible movie, but it’s not great.

Well, this was an EXTREME disappointment. It’s a bad movie, just truly awful, and now it’s an awful movie I own on DVD. Frustratingly, this movie didn’t even have the benefit of a familiar face like Lamorne Morris, so there was literally nothing to earn it an extra star. I don’t have a “no-star” rating, but this was definitely even worse than that other one-star movie with a LOT of familiar faces.

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this movie. I think I liked it? I also think it’s more of a comedy than you’d expect from the description.