Sometimes you sit down with no plan and you stumble across something interesting. This is exactly what happened with Scare Me. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling for the 7th day of 31 Days of Dread and when I opened up Shudder a brand new film was showcased at the top. The log line was as such:
“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.”
This struck me as possibly another anthology film and I’m always up for that but it turns out, it very much was not.
Yes, there are different stories, but the focus of the film never moves from the two narrators, Fred (Josh Ruben) and Fanny (Aya Cash). Scare Me is a film about stories, storytelling, and the artists behind it all. Fred and Fanny act out their stories with slight special effects and occasional reality bending scenery to simulate how our imagination views storytelling. The stories, while fun, aren’t very scary but it’s all to build up Fred slowly becoming more and more jealous of Fanny and her talent and success as a storyteller.
Two people telling scary stories around a fireplace might not sound super interesting, especially if the stories aren’t particularly scary, but I honestly found the film quite engaging. Ruben and Cash work well together and Cash’s portrayal of Fanny is super powerful, dominating Ruben’s Fred at nearly every turn.
Is it horror? I’d probably not classify it as such but I watched it on Shudder so, I guess it counts. Either way, I like it.
4*
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