WARNING! Spoilers for Scare Me ahead.
Josh Ruben's horror movie Scare Me features a unique forms of storytelling that goes beyond the expectations of anthologies and their tropes. Released on Shudder for their 61 Days Of Halloween programming in 2020, the movie follows Fred (Josh Ruben) and Fanny (Aya Cash) in a cabin in the woods telling each other stories. As they shift from monsters to ghostly grandpas, Scare Me finds the two horror novelists growing more creative and their relationship increasingly volatile.
Scare Me includes three short stories that are contained within its primary story arc. It resembles other horror anthologies such as Tales From The Hood and Creepshow. The three movies follow the framework of having a primary storyteller or storytellers as they relay information about a horrific event that is then shown to the audience as a film short. As these types of anthological tales progress, it's common that they reveal that each horror story is connected in some way or another. While Scare Me falls under the subgenre of horror anthologies, its variation on storytelling makes it far more unique than its predecessors.
Fanny and Fred are masterful storytellers who know how to illicit genuine scares. It is rare that an anthology breaks away from the traditional structure of short stories put together to create one bigger story or longer movie. In Scare Me, they showcase just how great breaking from the norm can be, especially when a demonic musical number is involved, providing a different experience for the audience.
What separates Scare Me from other horror anthologies is the fact that it never takes away from its primary cast of characters by showing the story through the confines of a short movie. The entirety of Scare Me follows Fanny and Fred as they tell the stories from their own mouths, including the use of impressions, impersonations, and sound effects to really add to the campfire tale sort of feel. While Fred tells the duo's first story about a werewolf, he emphatically creates the sounds that could come from the creature. As it continues, Fanny's imagination begins to see clawed hands and the sounds of a real wolf are played alongside Fred's impression of one.
This is an entirely different way of presenting several stories to an audience that could have backfired, but they do it successfully and with an abundance of humor. Commonly, an anthology will have an overarching story line that reconnects after every short story concludes. In Scare Me, the primary plot is woven throughout the stories they tell. When Fred tells his first story, Fanny corrects his word choice, calls it predictable, and critiques his characters. This builds on the tension he feels towards her, which culminates in the movie's gruesome end. The stories told in Scare Me are a way to entertain and provide scares to the characters as well as the audience, but they also serve the purpose of creating an even more volatile environment for Fred and Fanny.
Ultimately, Scare Me transcends the expectations of a horror movie by telling several stories contained in one larger work. While anthologies are undeniably successful in their ability to offer viewers with an array of chilling tales, Josh Ruben introduced a better way that includes greater continuity in the primary plot as well as storytelling that serves an even more satisfying purpose than to simply scare. With Shudder's 61 days of Halloween well underway, Scare Me set the precedent for any other anthologies the horror streaming service may provide for 2020's Halloween season.