While Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark was a slightly disappointing adaptation of the iconic book series, the nightmarish Pale Lady sequence alone makes it worth seeing. Guillermo del Toro is a lifelong fan of movie monsters, and he's created a few famous ones in his time. There's the terrifying Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth, the Angel Of Death from Hellboy II, and The Amphibian Man from The Shape Of Water. Outside of his own directorial projects, del Toro is also a prolific producer.
Some of del Toro's biggest producing projects include The Book Of Life, Mama, and Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark. Horror fans were expecting great things when he teamed with Trollhunters and The Autopsy Of Jane Doe director André Øvredal for 2019's Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. The movie adapts the popular children's horror stories written by Alvin Schwartz. These tales were accompanied by downright nightmarish illustrations from Stephen Gammell, and they delighted/scarred an entire generation of young readers.
The Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books were also greeted with controversy, with many parents finding them far too gruesome for children. The movie version sought to bring many of the book's most famous tales to life but merged them into one narrative instead of taking the anthology approach. Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark adapted tales like "The Red Spot" and "The Jangly Man," and while some sequences are genuinely well-executed and creepy, the plot and characters surrounding them feel perfunctory.
It sometimes feels like Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is going through the motions until it can get to the next big scare sequence, which can feel a tad hollow. That said, the movie also adapts "The Pale Lady" which results in more of the primally unsettlingly horror scenes in recent memory. The sequence involves main character Chuck (Austin Zajur) running around the corridors of a hospital where he sees the Pale Lady, a pasty, obese figure with beady, dark eyes and a slight grin who starts slowly walking towards him.
This Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark scene is bathed in bright red as every corridor Chuck flees down he's greeted by the sight of the Pale Lady getting closer and closer. She eventually corners him and gives him a hug, which slowly absorbs him into her stomach. From the borderline Dario Argento (Susperia) style lighting to the nightmare logic of the sequence, the Pale Lady scene is pure horror perfection. Even with its other flaws, this moment alone is enough to recommend Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.