Ahh, the cold air is creeping in, the smell of pumpkin spice is in the air, and Christmas decorations are crawling out of the attics on their own, prepping for their absurdly early debut.

But before we get there, we have my favorite holiday… Halloween!

I think Halloween is my favorite because I know for sure that the hellish Texas summer has finally relented its grip, and it just feels good. Plus, spooky movies and free candy!

But wait… It’s Tuesday!? Yes, it is. I found that it has become quite hard for me to get posts up on Friday, and I keep missing my deadline. Now, a few of my older followers since the beginning know that I used to post regularly on Tuesdays. I’m going to slip back into that format because it gives me the weekend to consume content and get a review up for the week. Get it? Got it? Good! Let’s get on with the spooky.

So in the spirit of Halloween, I’ll be selecting a few scary movies to watch and review, and in turn, you’ll have a list to choose from when the 31^st creeps around. You can take your pick, cuddle up in a blanket in front of the TV with some popcorn, and enjoy a little screamfest of your own. Also, this is very much how I prefer my ‘scary’; safe and secure at home. I’m a wimp.

Before the actual review, I’m going to redirect to a few older reviews, because I think they deserve a mention, and we need to get a wide range in so you can pick depending on your mood or company! Just follow the links to get my thoughts on the movies.

• Fear Street – a trilogy of movies targeted toward a younger adult audience.
• If you’re watching with a younger audience, I’d suggest Nightbooks for some light thrills and scares.
• Care for an apocalypse? Take a look at Awake.
• How about zombies? Army of the Dead (Careful, there be spoilers in this review.)
• Ghosts? Hitchcock? Here’s Things Heard & Seen and The Woman in the Window in the same post!

Wow, we’ve already got a well rounded list started!

For today’s review, this probably wasn’t a flick I would have picked myself, but my husband wanted to watch it. He was a fan of the books as a kid, and if they were children’s books, how bad could it be? So I bring you now to…

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

This movie is based off a book series by the same name, written by Alvin Schwartz that was published in the 80s. These were children books, so the film is possible aimed for children, but let me say that some of the visuals in this movie will haunt me for a long time. I don’t know how I would have processed it as a kid. I mean… C’mon.

Lordy, lordy. And that was only one monster. I would say that she was probably one of the most memorable monsters visually, but there were other scenes that left their own grotesque mark. One in particular made me literally gag, and I couldn’t watch a good few minutes of the movie. Another had to do with a pimple on a poor girl’s face. At the start of that scene, my husband, who knew what was going to happen, just looked at me and said, “have fun.”

Debra did not have fun.

I screamed a lot while watching, and there were multiple times I tried to crawl over the back of the couch. And this movie is for kids! Based on a book written for kids! Yes, I am a total wimp.

So, beyond the great visuals and trauma inducing scenes, this movie does not actually have a lot of gore. It’s rated PG13, after all. The characters that ‘die’ are done in a more ambiguous way, aside from one poor guy that definitely gets his neck broken. There are some very, very tense situations, and with some characters disappearing for good, you are never in a safe zone of knowing if anyone is going to make it out alive. Also, there are some good old-fashioned jump scares, which I would say any story of this nature should have at least a couple.

If you’ve got kids that might be interested in watching this movie, I would say it’s safe for young teens, but I personally would not let my 10yo watch it. I don’t want him scared and crawling into my bed at night after the Pale Lady comes for him in his dreams. Hell, that would probably scare me. However, I think it’s a great pick and a fun watch, especially if you were a fan of the books as a kid. It definitely was thick on the spooky, but the overall plot was slightly weak. However, the visuals and unnerving monsters made up for that. I mean, who sits down to watch a scary story for the plot? You want to be scared. I think this movie does it.

Well, that’s a lot to chew on for today. I’ll have a few more movies to add to the list next week so we can all have a spooky good time! Happy Reading and Watching!