Teens’ new scream queen does her predecessors proud

A soul-sucking scarecrow, a casserole made out of human body parts, and a giant, spider-spewing zit … this is a deliciously cheesy haunted house horror

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Scary Stories To Tell In the Dark

Three stars

Director: Andre Ovedal

Starring: Zoe Margaret Colletti, Gabriel Rush, Michael Garza

Rating: M

Running time: 110 minutes

Verdict: Skeleton-rattling teen horror

A soul-sucking scarecrow, a casserole made out of human body parts, and a giant, spider-spewing zit … this deliciously cheesy haunted house horror draws its inspiration from a bunch of grisly folk tales.

Based on Alvin Schwartz’s best-selling series of children’s books, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is an entry-level scarefest in that it’s creepy without being too graphic.

By setting the film in the 60s, against the backdrop of Nixon’s election campaign and an escalating Vietnam War, director Andre Ovedal (The Autopsy Of Jane Doe) neatly sidesteps the self-referential horror films of the 1990s.

Although they are being buffeted by the winds of change, the characters retain a certain innocence.

It’s Halloween when the movie opens.

Zoe Margaret Colletti, left, in a scene from Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.

Stella Nicholls (Zoe Margaret Colletti) and her mates Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur) are way too old for trick or treating, but they are determined to get even with the town bully, Tommy Milner (Austin Abrams), before he joins the army and they leave for college.

When their prank goes horribly wrong, Tommy chases the trio to the local drive-in, whereupon they take refuge in the car of a handsome drifter.

The chemistry between Stella and Ramon Morales (Michael Garza) is immediate.

Wanting to impress the out-of-towner, she takes him to the crumbling mansion abandoned perhaps a century ago by the town’s founding family — whereupon they stumble across a secret room and a book of stomach-curdling stories written by the family’s black sheep, Sarah Bellows. And that’s when things take a supernatural turn.

Zoe Colletti and Michael Garza in Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.

The empty pages in Bellows’ book start to fill with new stories, written in what appears to be blood.

And one-by-one the townsfolk disappear in the manner prescribed by the unseen author.

Tommy is the first to get his comeuppance — at night, in a wheat field.

Auggie’s next; his fate is classically grotesque. Chuck’s demons, on the other hand, are strange and surreal. His pretty older sister, Ruthie (Natalie Ganzhorn), experiences a kind of arachnid psychosis just before her appearance in the high school musical.

Stella and Ramon know what’s coming — unless they can somehow neutralise the demon they have unleashed.

Michael Garza in a scene from Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.

Tracking down the Bellows family’s former servant, they learn a dark and dreadful secret, one that might help them to right a terrible wrong.

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark gets under your skin like a good campfire story should.

With her unfiltered freckles and oversized spectacles, Stella is the latest in a long line of resourceful scream queens. The morbidly curious proto-Goth does her predecessors proud.

Now screening.

Originally published as Teens’ new scream queen does her predecessors proud