BIG MOVIE
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark042 | WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK
Bad things are lurking in the big screen
adaptation of Alvin Schwartz’s children’s
horror anthology book series, Scary Stories
To Tell In The Dark. We talk to director
André Øvredal to find out more...
LEGEND HAS IT
WORDS POPPY-JAY PALMERIN THE AGE OF ANTHOLOGIES, this year’s big summer horror
comes in the form of Lionsgate’s Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark,
based on Alvin Schwartz’s short story book collection of the same
name. Trollhunter and The Autopsy Of Jane Doe director André Øvredal
is helming the project, which follows a group of teenagers from the
small town of Mill Valley as they come across a book hidden in a
mansion. Little do they know, the book as written by a young girl called
Sarah with horrible secrets who turned the true events of her tortured
life into a book of scary stories, which begin to come real for the kids.
With Trollhunter’s blend of horror, adventure and comedy and Jane
Doe’s deliciously creepy chills, Øvredal’s genre cred is beyond reproach.
“I grew up as a child of the VHS generation,” he tells us. “It’s been my
favourite genre as I’ve grown up, I was watching all kinds of horror.”
Raised in Norway, horror films were sometimes hard to come by for
Øvredal. With strict film guidelines in place, many of his favourites
were banned in his home country, so his family would sometimes
obtain horror films on the sly during visits to England. “Evil Dead, I
think, was illegal in Norway,” he says, "and I remember [my family got
me a copy] and it was the highlight of my life at that time.”
Jane Doe received critical praise upon its release, but the director is
trying something new with Scary Stories. "Jane Doe is a minimalist
film, and Scary Stories is, in some ways, a maximalist film,” he
explains. “It’s got a specific time period, it’s got an epic tone, it’s a
journey for these characters on a whole different level. So it’s been a
great experience to be able to broaden out from minimalism to making
something with a much broader scope, but still keep it a horror movie.”
However, some of Øvredal’s previous horror’s influence leaks into
Scary Stories, namely the way in which he constructs suspense. “I like
to keep people guessing or waiting,” he says. “I love anticipation. I
think it’s sometimes more fun than the actual scare. I love playing with
the camera and editing and pacing and music. I think it will show up, I
think you’ll be able to tell that it’s the same director behind Jane Doe.”
With Scary Stories being aimed at a slightly younger audience
than most horror films, Øvredal wanted to keep the focus more on
the suspenseful side of the genre and less on the grotesque. “I think
the movie will be perceived as scary — it definitely has been at test
screenings — so I don’t think it’s tougher being PG-13,” he explains. “A
lot of great horror movies have been PG-13. I think Poltergeist was PG in
its day. So I think it’s tone... The film doesn’t have an evil tone. We’re
not out to torture the audience. We’re out to give them a fun time.”
With a cast made up mostly of teenagers and young adults, many of
the film’s stars are unknowns, and actors with only a handful of film
credits to their names. Zoe Colletti leads the cast as Stella Nicholls, the
girl who finds the book of Scary Stories.
“Some [of the actors] have quite a bit of experience, and others have
less, but they’ve all been chosen for their personality, for what they