TheScary Stories to Tell in the Darkadaptation from directorAndré Øvredaland producerGuillermo del Torois going to bring to life dozens of horrifying creations first dreamed up inAlvin Schwartz’s generation-traumatizing books: Harold the homicidal scarecrow. The Pale Lady. The ghoul with the missing big toe. But a new poster reveals the one original creature that was patched together exclusively for the film. He’s called The Jangly Man, and I would very much like to not look at him any more than is necessary.
The Jangly Man will be portrayed practically by contortionistTroy James, who has embodied other bendy abominations like Pretzel Jack in Syfy’sChannel Zeroand Baba Yaga in the latestHellboyfilm. During the film’s presentation at San Diego Comic-Con 2019, del Toro and Co. revealed that the new creature’s design is a blend of several illustrations byStephen Gammell, the artist responsible for the unsettling drawings in the original books. “We were creating designs from something that scared us as kids,”saidcreature effects supervisorMike Elizalde
Check out the poster below.Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark—which also starsZoeMargaret Colletti,Michael Garza, andDean Norris—jingle-jangles its way into theaters on August 9.
Here’s the official synopsis forScary Stories to Tell in the Dark:
It’s 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind…but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time—stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah’s terrifying home.
