‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ is "handsome and deliciously horrible"

Horror fans tend to be sniffy about filmmakers who eschew lashing of gore and an atmosphere of kiddie-repulsing intensity in favor of attempting to garner the largest possible audience with a rating lower than an R. But every so often, a movie comes around which both reminds those fans of the less extreme terror tales which originally inspired their love for genre cinema while also helping to ensure the future of horror by seeding that devotion in today’s teens and pre-teens. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark lands firmly — and with an ominous, yet not too ominous, squelch — in that camp.