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Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark044 | WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK
bring to the characters,” Øvredal tells us.
They really helped me shape the characters
into who they are. They’re so natural and
giving to work – they seem to have a lot of
faith, sometimes I’m shocked at how much
faith they have after I’ve given extremely
precise direction. I think there are some
definite star potential in several of these
actors. To me, they’re amazing, which is
something that is consistently there. [They
listen to feedback] and their performances
are so great. So I think the audience will see
a lot from them, especially from Zoe Colletti,
the lead. She’s an amazing actress, and we
will see a lot of her, that’s for sure.”
Scary Stories kicks off in 1968 in America,
during a tense era in the world. With wars,
revolutions, assassinations and loads of other
dramatic events happening all around the
globe, people were living on edge.
“There was general turbulence with things
that were going on in the background of our
lives,” says the director. “That kind of feeling
of not working in a society where everything
is under control. I thought it would be
a fascinating thing to play with. I never
thought in my life that I would make a period
movie, that wasn’t a particular thing for me,and then suddenly they presented me with
a screenplay with 1968 as the time period.
We had amazing production designers and
costume designers, and people who really
know this era, and it was so much fun to
go into this and create it. Even seeing how
things repeat themselves, like the costumes,
seeing what was modern then compared to
what’s modern now, it’s fascinating, how
everything goes in circles.”
One of Scary Stories’ biggest pulls is the
fact that the brilliant Guillermo del Toro has
been on board from the start. The filmmaker
developed the story with Patrick Melton
and Marcus Dunstan, and has stayed on
to produce alongside Sean Daniel, Jason F
Brown, Elizabeth Grave and his The Shape
Of Water colleague J Miles Dale. It sounds as
though GDT was a selling point for Øvredal
too, who hadn’t even heard of the Scary
Stories book series before the script for the
film landed on his desk.
“Guillermo’s involvement was an amazing
thing, to be able to work with maybe the
greatest living director at the moment and
definitely of our generation, to be able to be
part of his monster universe,” says Øvredal.
“I was thinking about that while we werefinishing up the movie, in a way I’m a part of
Guillermo’s monster universe. That’s quite an
unbelievable thing to be.”
During production, del Toro was always
fighting in Øvredal’s corner. “He’s so warm
and so welcoming and so giving, and he was
so protective of the way I wanted to make the
movie. Even J Miles Dale and Sean Daniel,
who have done a tonne of big, wonderful,
classic movies, really protected Scary Stories
throughout the process to make sure that I
had every resource that they could possibly
give me. It’s been amazing. Especially
Guillermo, who knows what kind of support
a director actually needs... He made sure
that I would never be stepped on by anybody.
He told me: ‘This is your movie and you will
do the movie you want, and I’ll just be there
to support you.’ He really did that, the whole
time. He gave me a tonne of creative advice,
and he basically said you can take it or leave
it. But, you know, this is my story. He’s been
extremely helpful with everything from the
effects and the creatures to the design, all
that stuff has been an amazing collaboration.
And walking into it, it was a great thing to
have a person who was in a way a mentor
to me.”“I have a realist approach and Guillermo del Toro has a fantastical approach,
I think there is a very interesting balance between those two elements and
that we’ve created something unique”
André Øvredal