Nightbooks (2021)
Directed by David Yarovesky
Alex, a boy obsessed with scary stories, is trapped by a witch in her modern, magical New York City apartment. His original hair-raising tales are the only thing keeping him safe as he desperately tries to find a way out of this twisted place.
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6 films that influenced Nightbooks
What critics say influenced Nightbooks
In that sense, Ritter’s performance channels Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada.”
An old console TV flickers and plays The Lost Boys , which is catnip to Alex. Next to it is a slice of pumpkin pie, and he takes a big old bite of it like a total rube.
His passion for the horror genre has made him a pariah among his grade-school peers, which leads him to dismantle a bedroom full of posters for movies such as “The Lost Boys” and “The People Under the Stairs,” and to gather his “nightbooks” of self-penned short stories for disposal in the basement furnace of his apartment building.
The opening scene of Netflix’s new horror-lite offering finds the film’s pint-size protagonist, Alex (Winslow Fegley), in a bedroom festooned with posters from the same scary movies we all grew up on, from The Lost Boys to A Nightmare on Elm Street — movies that weren’t necessarily made for kids, yet made a deep impression on the generation of youngsters who managed to clap their eyeballs on them anyway.
Fangoria magazines, The Lost Boys playing in the background (with Cry Little Sister playing on and off in little bursts); these little winks are like little spoonfuls of candy to the modern horror fan.
Alex doesn’t get very far; he passes by an apartment with a door wide open and the TV playing The Lost Boys .
Dressed like a modern-day version of David Bowie’s Jareth from Labyrinth , her looks are that of a glam villain, complete with capes, a frosty blue wig, and jewel gloves with cat nails.
Save for a small handful of recent films like “The House with the Clock in Its Walls” or the “Goosebumps” movies — nearly all with Jack Black as comic relief — chillers for children are an uncommon and somewhat dicey proposition.
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Films like Monster House and Coraline have proven there is a space for fun and frightening horror films aimed at a younger demographic.
Fortunately, there’s another kid around, a fellow prisoner named Yasmin (Lidya Jewett, The Darkest Minds ), and she shows him the ropes, which in this case means learning how to stay alive.