All 6 Shorts From Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark Ranked

5. The Haunted House

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Harold Poster
Lionsgate

The Haunted House is the only story that is more abstract than the straight-forward horror shorts of the other six. It’s sort of up to interpretation, and here’s mine: for Stella’s story she basically gets transported in time and is now living in Sarah Bellows place; she’s going to be stuck in that basement writing stories until Sarah’s family hangs her.

The family seems pretty positive Stella is Sarah and we do see the ends of a dress when Stella walks by a mirror, also Ramón finds her glasses in the present. With this Stella’s writing comes into play and she would be involuntarily abandoning her father as she had feared.

The creature in this (a Sarah Bellows that pretty cleverly mirrors the illustration from the short of the same name) isn’t as upsetting to look at as the other five (though, her shriek was a bit much); the implications are much more unsettling. The others were quick, for the most part, while Stella’s would have been a long, drawn out, and horrifying process. She sensibly confronts Sarah and ends all the carnage of her and Ramón, luckily because had she not her new life would be that of isolation and murder.

Contributor
Contributor

If you talk in a theatre I'm in, be prepared to get some pretty passive aggressive stares.