2020 Directed by Josh Ruben
During a power outage, two strangers tell scary stories. The more Fred and Fanny commit to their tales, the more the stories come to life in the dark of a Catskills cabin. The horrors of reality manifest when Fred confronts his ultimate fear: Fanny is the better storyteller.
Asústame, 스케어 미, Me Assuste, Напугай меня, Korkut Beni!, 吓我一跳, 鬼話對決
USA
Sundance Film Festival
Germany16
USANR
Russian Federation16+
Australia
Australia
Germany
Russian Federation
USA
Snowy cabin in the woods setting is aces, I LOVE the storytelling premise, interesting sound design, and the creepy tree silhouette/shadowy bloody werewolf hand stuff... but I felt a bad omen that I would dislike this when the tedious car trip intro tried to bank on a ‘James Came-Ron’ joke twice in a minute, and then the smarmy obnoxious writer character dissed Silver Bullett as a trash movie. Don’t get me wrong... There’s some cool stuff here and I love small cast one location style movies, but I really couldn’t vibe with Aya Cash in this, or the numerous horror movie references or the cringe cryptkeeper impersonations.
Anyways, I get the appeal of this—there’s good, even great stuff here and there’s a lot of people that’ll love this thing, but I dunno guys... this really wasn’t my jam.
Bummer.
We all watching the same movie or what? I thought this was a delight. Tiny cast and location that makes great use of framing, lighting, and fucking sound design to create a sense of tension, humor, and scale beyond its means. The small details in the production design, silhouettes of mentioned ideas, objects appearing and disappearing in the scene, are simple tricks that lend so much effect to the tales being told; charmingly so by everyone involved, but particularly Aya Cash. I'm not really familiar with her outside of hearing about her as of late, but she has a captivating presence here and I'd be glad to see her in more. This was fun, simple, and clever.
Aya Cash is able to perform accents and voices, but despite her delivery still seems miscast as the smarter-than-thou bestselling horror writer. Josh Ruben stars as Fred, the no-good aspiring horror writer who feels emasculated when Aya Cash's character, Fanny, breathes. Ruben also directed the film. He is supposed to be threatening and scary as well, but just yawn.
This is also a universe where people can eat pizza that's been out all night. If you're thinking about seeing this film, just realize you might get more pleasure from ripping it apart or laughing at its ridiculousness than from the writing, directing, acting, or cinematography.
Vegan alert:
-Deer head on wall
-Cheese on pizza
Vegan justification:
Fanny thinks dairy turned Fred into a psychopath.
Ultra-meta horror comedy about two horror writers in a creepy upstate cabin in the woods trying to scare each other with scary stories. A fun twist on the usual scary stories, using imagination and sound effects to remind us how fun horror storytelling is.
I like how much this film strips away everything and takes us back to the simplistic roots of indie horror where storytelling and imagination are all they rely on. Works well. Great horror to watch with pizza & beer - mostly because they're having pizza & beer, too.
Incomprehensibly awful. I love Aya Cash to death, but I'm just left shaking my head at how poorly conceived of a film this is. It's like a sketch idea that shouldn't have even been good enough for a middle school improv group - and yet, that idea is stretched and stretched and stretched so thin it's downright tortuous. In case you're curious, don't be. It's literally a group of people acting out scary scenes the entire runtime, but without any discernible sense of comedy or satire. How thrilling.
GRADE: D
"Come on John Wick, pass the Bechdel test" -Fanny.
- 2020 Ranked: boxd.it/4zdAI
It's intimidating to meet someone that is better than you at something you love, especially if you have been raised to think that you are a special person bound for great things. It hurts the ego, which everyone has, and creates a fear of failure which nearly everyone experiences at some point. Scare Me attempts to monopolize on these fears by creating horror out of the fear of failure and it half succeeds.
The film does a good job of skewering masculinity in funny and truthful ways. Some of the film is really good. Aya Cash is really talented but she needed a better script to perform.…
i'm not entirely sure how i should rate this so i'd say three stars is fair for now. this was fun, but nothing really happened and it definitely didn't need to be 103 minutes long.
the pizza guy showing up and staying long enough to do some coke and drink wine before leaving was the highlight for me. he knows what life is all about.
I always have a lot of fun watching this movie. Lots of good humor and the idea to make the sound effects of their stories seem real was a great idea.
Between Scare Me and Werewolves Within I think Josh Ruben is off to a fantastic start to his feature length directing. Very excited for his next movie Green Bank to get a release date
Lists:
2020 Movies Ranked
i honestly don’t know why people are hating on this it’s so much fun you silly heads
This is 100% my type of movie.
Officially on the list as an October must watch. Aya Cash is perfection and I will watch her in ANYTHING.
