SCARY STORIES / CERT: UNRATED / DIRECTOR: CODY MEIRICK / STARRING: AMELIA COTTER, BRUCE COVILLE, DEBBIE DADEY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (VOD)

Director Cody Meirick’s documentary Scary Stories looks at the cult of fandom and the long-reaching influence of author Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series of books. Speaking with fans who’ve been tattooed, musicians who perform songs, academics who’ve studied, and artists who’ve reinterpreted Schwartz’s work – especially those influenced by his illustrator, Stephen Gammell – the film attempts to present a thorough and involving story of the three books, which were published from 1981-1991.

Scary Stories doesn’t quite succeed, due in no small part to the fact that it’s hard to create a solid documentary when one’s subject is dead and his collaborator doesn’t do interviews. The first half of the film is a bit draggy, introducing several speakers related to the attempted banning of the first book from a Seattle elementary school library and then promptly dropping the story for a lengthy period of time. It seemed as if it was going to be the thread around which the film was based, but it never quite gels as a concept. Also, at no point is it explained just how the Scary Stories books came to be published in the first place, which seems as if it’s an important aspect of the whole tale of these influential collections.

The successful aspects of Meirick’s film lean heavily into those who have a connection to the subject matter which was explored by Schwartz in his work, such as academics. Fellow childrens’ horror writer R.L. Stine also offers a lot in regards to the process of writing for children, as well as relating to the experience of having one’s books challenged. Gary Alan Fine has the experience of what it’s like to have been cited as a source for one of Schwartz’s stories, and that in particular offers the sort of direct connection which is otherwise missing from Scary Stories.

While the filmmakers speak with Schwartz’s children and widow, Stine and Fine seem to be the only ones who are directly in the same realm as the author himself. Everything else is distant or academic, operating at a remove and in a hypothetical realm, until the film’s final ten minutes, wherein the author’s son Peter sits down to speak with the head of the Seattle PTA, 28 years after the controversy which begins the film.

All that said, perhaps the most revealing moment of the documentary, and that which sums up the entirety of the books’ influence, sees the filmmakers asking a pair of men, “What do you remember about it?” in regards to the story, and one responds simply, “Nightmares?”