Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 2, the sequel to the film adaptation of Alvin Schwartz’s series of children’s books, will include even more content from its source material. Schwartz’s picture books, published in the 80s with illustrations from Stephen Gammell, are classics in the niche genre of children’s horror alongside R. L. Stine’s better known Goosebumps series. While the Scary Stories film adaptation created a uniquely unsettling audiovisual experience, many remember the books so vividly because of the macabre drawings that accompanied the pages. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was adapted into a movie released in 2019 with Guillermo del Toro as a producer and story developer.
The movie strings together a few tales from each of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books in a semi-anthology style that introduces different boogeymen of Schwartz’s invention into one feature-length narrative. The mini-plots are connected under the umbrella premise that a group of three friends get trapped in a haunted house and find a book of scary stories that come to life in the real world. The stories were written by a girl named Sarah Bellows, who committed suicide inside the house. Over the course of the movie, members of the group live out horrifying new stories as they appear in the book. Although the movie was rated PG-13, it received mostly positive reviews due to an imaginative interpretation of material meant for kids that managed to produce some genuinely terrifying moments nonetheless.
Discussing the production with Collider‘s Witching Hour podcast, director André Øvredal explains that the sequel will do more than go through the motions of committing more stories to the screen. Øvredal explains that the creative team will use Gammell’s original illustrations as inspiration for the horrors to come in the second installment, saying, “I learned so much on Scary Stories, but also about Scary Stories, and I do think that we’ll tap even more into Gammell’s visual world in the sequel than we did in the first movie.”
Considering the more ghoulish-looking monsters were some of the scariest parts of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, a sequel that further develops Gammell’s visual horrors promises to be even more traumatizing. Del Toro and the screenwriters chose the Toe Monster, Harold the Scarecrow, the Jangly Man, and the Pale Lady as the first movies’ main monsters. With over 80 stories from the original books, the filmmakers behind Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 2 have plenty of monsters to choose from for the sequel.
Although del Toro is only producing and developing the story for this project, his aesthetic sensibilities certainly feel present in the first movie. Gammell’s drawing style also feels reminiscent of del Toro movies like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water, so having him involved will no doubt benefit the sequel. The first film did well enough to warrant a sequel, so it’s a good sign that the creative team behind Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 2 is again relying on the source material rather than trying to create new monsters.
Source: Collider
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