Starring Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Lorraine Toussaint

Directed by André Øvredal

Entertainment One, out now

When a bunch of teenagers steal a storybook from a haunted house they set in motion a chain of events taken straight from its pages.

André Øvredal’s (Troll Hunter) horror-lite movie is being touted as a gateway for teenagers to experience the genre without being overly scared or repulsed. On these terms, Scary Movies To Tell in the Dark is successful, the blood and guts being low in the mix, with the emphasis on spooky jump scares. Unfortunately, while a PG-13 in the States, it’s a 15 certificate in the UK, thus excluding a key demographic in the early teens, while those expecting a 15-rated movie are likely to feel under served.

It’s Halloween 1968 and Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) goes out trick or treating with best friends Auggie and Chuck, concocting a prank on town bully Tommy. While trying to escape from Tommy, they meet up with draft dodger Ramon and all end up in the neighbourhood’s haunted house. One of its former occupants, Sarah Bellows, was locked away, and passed her time by writing horror stories. And by stealing the book, Stella has awoken the evil within the volume, causing her friends (and enemies) to become the stars of their own nightmares.

While not an anthology movie, it’s episodic in nature as each of the unleashed monsters stalks their prey, and if truth be told, this does become repetitive very quickly. The source material is Alvin Schwartz’s three story collections of the same name, boasting 83 tales over 350 pages. They’re very popular in the States (over 7m copies sold) but each story is a short sting, with little room to go beyond the one shock.

There’s solid input by Guillermo Del Toro, who co-wrote the screenplay, and Øvredal is adept at building up the mild scares. Unfortunately, matters conclude at such a sequel bait moment that this doesn’t feel like a complete experience. I’ll watch further instalments with interest, but maybe a limited TV series would better suit the episodic small-scale ambitions.

Verdict: Fun, spooky, entry level horror that won’t leave you looking under the covers when you get home. The appealing cast save the day in the face of some generic horror tropes, but this is really just an opener for something more expansive. 7/10

Nick Joy