User Reviews

"And the subject is...'Scary Stories'!"

The majority of Scare Me plays like an extended and fx-driven section of the popular improvisation comedy "Whose Line..."

You half expect Clive Anderson to appear...along with Richard Vranch at the piano!

Basically the story has a stripped-down, improvisational feel that, at first, is a little disappointing. However, the two leads are obviously masters of their craft. The guy being genuinely funny and the girl being cute, funny and condescending in turn.

Their anthology of horror tales are aided, technically, by lighting and sound effects (very stagey) and, like traditional portmanteaus, are of varying quality. The only difference is that the tales are told and acted out by the storytellers, and not played out as dramatic sketches ala..well any portmanteau I can think of really. Imagine "Jackanory" but filmed in a huge log cabin and where the storyteller is not confined to a single chair, but acts out improvised stories using the whole space of the room. The action never cuts away from the storyteller or their audience.

There is a nice addition of a pizza delivery guy, about midway through the movie, who adds welcome zeal and enthusiasm to the proceedings.

Its a shame that the movie resorts to a pro narcotic stance, revealing one of the two leads (the Mary Sue) to be a habitual cokehead.

The ending twist was disappointing and went against the grain as I felt that the two leads had a fun rapport. To have one show genuine menace against the other felt disjointed and I half-expected and wanted this sequence to be another played-out horror story with both leads contributing, back and forth, to the narrative.

However, it did spring to mind that maybe, the entire movie situation was actually played out in the mind of the Driver (a writer herself) character that popped up in the beginning and end of the movie. Maybe this is the actual twist, in that she actually has "her" book published in a mid-credits sequence. It is implied that she found a notebook of ideas (written by one of the leads) and plagiarised it for her own ends. However, the owner of the notebook (which is the catalyst for the final acts' nastiness) is still very much alive at the end of the movie and would have realised that the Driver's stories were ripped off. So maybe the Driver's book was actually the story as shown in the movie to us, the viewer, and everything we have witnessed is a fictional possibility as dreamed-up by the driver.

Overall, Scare Me is a tad too long for what it is (an hour and 3 quarters) and is going to disappoint the crowd it's marketed at. Which is a shame as it is fun and very well acted and photographed.

All that's missing from it is Ryan Styles doing a hoedown...

Spoiler Alert

Not sure who at Shudder green lit this terrible waste of 2 hours they call a movie. It was boring as boring gets. 2 hours of watching 2 ding dongs tell non-scary stories. Absolute waste of time. If Shudder continues putting out bad originals like this I will definitely be cancelling.

There is a lot to unpack when it comes to the dynamic between the two main characters, their respective experience and views of the world, the stories told, the psyche behind horror writers and plagiarism. It unfolds in a great way but ends on a somewhat weak but still solid note. A lot of laughs but also builds great tension, the actors are what really holds this movie together even though the stories told is the punchline and their telling of them. The gleeful reenactment of their ideas and the uncertain motivations behind Fred's deceitful bumbling floundering persona, Fannys headstrong no nonsense which gives way to some vulnerability but she never stops in her steps. Their setbacks although different have given them two totally different branching paths of seeing their future, one wallows in their depression while the other never lets it hold them back. If your story has been done you just have to do it better or die off skewered by yourself, alone. Great concept, better than I expected and lovely acting.

So this movie is nearly TWO HOURS long. It doesnt get exciting until literally the last 5 mimutes of the movie and then its over. I gave 4 stars because it did make me laugh a few times. Mostly it's cringe humor, though.



Spoilers next: The female character is very unlikable. The pizza guy served no purpose to the story at all. Here for 10 minutes of cringe and them gone. No furthering of the plot. I REALLY REALLY REALY wish they would have persued the horror aspect a little more. As they told stories, if we could have seen them come to life from the view of the imagination if the listener as the other told the story. They used this a FEW times with the warewolf claw, the troll eyes, and the door opening. Would have loved to see that way more. It was the only exciting part. Like, when he looks over you really see an old man laying there. Or when the dog comes downstairs to really see that. It made no sense to show us a REAL werewolf claw and the glowing eyes of the troll but nothing else???? Ball dropped big time.

I cringed a few times at the beginning but I really like Fanny and the cab driver Betty who became the new horror author after she found Fanny's notebook at Fred's cabin in the morning. The stories weren't scary in particular which let me down a bit because I expected to get spooked by some scary stories told in a dark cabin during a power out and snowstorm but they were instead funny and weird. The pizza guy was really good, too. Then Fred was so emasculated that he went crazy and stabbed the poke he's carrying in his stomach. He died by himself before Fanny didn't finish him off and just walked off. I expected something to do with the attic or the basement or one of them was a killer or even something supernatural but still it was pretty entertaining.