If you’re in the mood for some theatrical-based frights this Halloween season and don’t want to bother to see Countdown, here’s some good news. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is returning to theaters this weekend, and will run through Halloween. The creepy (but mostly family-friendly) horror flick adapts the iconic book series that traumatized children everywhere with its weird, drippy drawings.

Director André Øvredal confirmed the news about Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark returning to theaters himself via Twitter:

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK is back in over 1500 THEATRES all over North America this weekend and through Halloween!

Bring the family – it's PG-13 scary ;-)https://t.co/OUX4H8KrD8

— Andre Ovredal (@Filmtroll) October 23, 2019

The film is currently available on digital if you don’t want to leave your house, and it’ll be on Blu-ray November 4. But if you’re craving an excuse to see a scary movie in theaters, this is a good choice. As a hardcore fan of the book series, I was both curious and nervous to see how this film would turn out. The end result was (mostly) satisfying.

I think the film’s approach as one straightforward narrative doesn’t quite work, and this would’ve been a better film had it adopted an anthology format. But beyond that, there’s some genuinely creepy stuff in here – it’s rated PG-13, but it’s a hard PG-13. On top of that, the movie also deals with surprisingly adult issues (there’s an entire subplot about the Vietnam War here). As I wrote in a piece on the film:

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark understands that in the real world, kids really do get put in danger. In the real world, kids die. They suffer at the hands of bullies, or abusive parents, or racist cops. Or they get sent off to war by grinning, empty-suited politicians. How scary is that?

In Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, “It’s 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind…but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time—stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah’s terrifying tome.” Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, and Lorraine Toussaint star.

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