Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

[camper]

Originally Posted by jlk5844

But they definitely weren't "kiddy" and not all goofy. There was a mature, disturbing angle to many of the stories and there was even some light gore and grotesque and scary details. The pictures illustrate this obviously.

Not all of them, but a lot of them were. The big Toe, The Hook, The Viper, Wait till Martin Comes (the big cat one), the hearse song, "Where's my golden arm" were all pretty light, typical little kid scary stories.

There were a handful of more 'aggressive' ones too though.

I suppose PG might work, but it needs to push limits and be as hard of a PG as it can, in the sense of an intense mood and creepy atmosphere, one of the stories can be silly but I personally wouldn't want all of them to be that way.

The key thing to remember is that this is a kids book, meant for 8-12 year olds. You make it PG-13 and you exclude a HUGE audience, because *shockingly* there are parents (such as myself) who will not let an 8 year old watch a PG-13 movie. And a PG-13 horror movie can be QUITE graphic.

Monster House was extremely creepy, and had some very dark elements to it and did will with the mood and atmosphere. And, it was PG.

There is no reason it couldn't be PG. THey don't need to show a lot of gore. In fact, less is more when it comes to little kids. The "Large Marge" scene from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is enough to scare and creep out a great many kids. And that was meant to be funny.

I think this needs to be one of those dark kids movies from the 80s or 90s that pushed the boundaries and didn't shy away from somewhat rough stuff. Also, if I hadn't mentioned before, this would look great shot in black-and-white.

They can still do a lot with PG. Black and white could be interesting, especially if they use some limited coloring effects peppered in on key elements like they did with the Sin City movies---but less drastic and obvious.