"Some people believe if we repeat stories often enough, they become real."
Unfortunately for the protagonists of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, that old adage appears to be true. When Stella Nicholls and her three friends seek a thrill at a haunted house, they discover a book of scary stories. As they begin to devour the stories within, elements of them begin to appear in their everyday lives. When one of them disappears, they realize the danger they are in, and they're the only ones who can stop it.
The movie is based on the three-book series by author Alvin Schwartz, with illustrations by Stephen Gammell. The books were released in 1981, 1984 and 1991 respectively, and for many kids growing up in the 1980s and '90s, they were a gateway to the horror genre.
The film will combine material from several of the series' short stories into one connected narrative. The story centers around the legacy of Sarah Bellows, who turned her tortured life into a series of terrifying tales, and a group of teenagers who experience her work on and off the page. As Zoe Margaret Colletti's Stella said in the teaser trailer, "You don't read the book. The book reads you."
Directed by André Øvredal from a script by by Guillermo del Toro, Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark stars Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Javier Botet and Lorraine Toussaint, and is scheduled to be released on Aug. 9, 2019.