I've been wanting to watch this one for a while because I remember reading the books when my kids were smaller and enjoying them. They were the perfect blend of "child-safe" and "creepy as hell" that gave them and me an awesome connecting point. What I wasn't expecting, though, was how much this movie actually talked about telling stories.
Consider it a pleasant surprise on my part.
The basics: Stella joins her friend Augie and Chuck to get a little Halloween prank revenge on a school bully and end up in a haunted house. Intrigued by the stories of Sara Bellows telling tales through the wall to kids, most of whom ended up missing, Stella takes the book of stories from the house and faster than you can say "I told you not you," brand new stories start to appear and Stella's friends begin to disappear while living out those tales.
Not all lessons about telling stories and writing from this film are equal, however. For starters, when Ramon discovers Stella's journal of her own fiction, he asks her about it, then quickly adds that "If you're serious about being a writer, it's not going to happen here. You have to go to the city."
Sadly, this lie still permeates the publishing community, this idea that it takes an urban setting to be a writer, that you have to live close to the publishers themselves. That may or may not be true in the screenplay business (I don't know) but it certainly isn't for the prose fiction world anymore.
The digital revolution has all but negated the pro/con discussions between urban/rural locations for writers. Email and teleconferencing have alleviated the need for proximity to publishers.
Not only that, thanks to the wonder of self-publishing or a scattering of indie and mid-list presses all over the place, a grandmother in the middle of Kansas has the same access to getting a book published as a stereotype living in poverty in a loft in New York.
But let's move on to the lessons this creepy movie gets right.
First, stories are very, very powerful. And they are powerful in many ways.
At the beginning of the movie, Stella narrates a line that becomes a sort of mantra and theme during the film.
"Stories hurt. Stories heal."
We see this proven true in not only the literal monsters in the stories told by the ghost of Sara Bellows (experienced in real-time by Stella's friends), but also in the stories told all over town that leads to Sara's plight. Ghost Sara's stories actually hurt and destroy the kids in town, but the lies told passed around about Sara are equally capable of destroying her life.
And sometimes a new story is the only thing to replace or end a previous story. We see this in all the new stories being told by people who rarely had a voice in years past. Tales from black, brown, and indigenous voices, tales from LGBTQIA voices, tales from women that help to set right the misrepresentation of years gone by are more important than ever. We see so much more representation in the characters and authors of top-selling fiction nowadays, and it is needed to right the wrongs of the past.
It's also a lesson Stella learns, as she promises to tell Sara's story, her real, true story to rebut the lies and legends that remain prevalent.
As the credits begin to roll, we hear Stella's narration again, only this time with some additional information.
"Stories hurt. Stories heal. If we repeat them often enough they become real. They have that power. Stories can teach us to care."
At this point, we see the redemptive nature of stories. Stella (and we by extension) have moved from hurt to heal. And they can continue to work toward healing, because, as her narration continues, we learn that stories never truly end. (Spoiler warning for this bit. Consider yourself warned.)
"Chuck and Augie are still gone, but I know there is a way to bring them back and that the secret is in the book, and we won't stop until we find them."
The best stories, whether prose, movies, comics, you name it, live on long after the book is closed and the last credit rolls. The best stories still have important nuances to share, important wisdom to say, important ideas to teach -- and yes, even when they might primarily serve as "mere" escapism:
"The secret is in the book, and we won't stop until we find them."
No comments:
Post a Comment