Psycho's Movie Reviews #112: NIGHTBOOKS (2021)

Nightbooks is a 2021 American dark fantasy film directed by David Yarovesky and written by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Laconis. The film stars Winslow Fegley, Lidya Jewett, and Krysten Ritter. Based on the 2018 horror-fantasy children's book of the same name by J. A. White, it was released September 15, 2021, on Netflix.

Plot

Alex Mosher, a young boy from Brooklyn, New York, who loves to write scary stories, swears to never write another one again due to his parents' concerns about his mental health. He trashes his room and grabs his "Night books"—his collection of self-written scary stories—and sneaks out of his apartment while his parents are talking. He takes the elevator to his complex's furnace to burn them. Before he reaches the furnace room, he passes an apartment with an open door that bewitches him into entering. The apartment door shuts behind him and disappears.

He awakens to find himself in the magical apartment of a witch named Natacha. She threatens him with her magic and informs him the apartment lures children into it and only those who are useful to her are kept alive. She is intrigued by Alex's penchant for writing scary stories and demands that he write her stories and read them to her each night, or she'll kill him. She puts him to work alongside a young girl named Yazmin, who was similarly lured into the apartment years ago in Washington and put to work as a housekeeper. Alex learns from Yazmin that the apartment moves around the world, and its only exits are the front and back door, which respond only to Natacha's magical keys.

Yazmin shows Alex the witch's enormous library, telling him Natacha has heard every scary story in it, which is why the witch gave him a task to write new ones. Alex is reluctant, saying he cannot write, though he will not tell her why. Yazmin informs him that Natacha's magical cat named Lenore, which can turn invisible, is spying on them and will tell her everything it sees.

Each night, Natacha is unimpressed with Alex's stories and demands they end unhappily. She also repeatedly requests Alex tell her the story of why he intended to burn his Night books, but Alex manages to dodge her requests by distracting her each time. While reading through the library's collection for inspiration, Alex encounters notes in the margins of various books written by another trapped girl detailing her attempts to escape the witch's home. Her treasured possession, a unicorn necklace, causes him to dub her "Unicorn Girl".

Yazmin and Alex begin to bond as they engage in their household tasks, and they eventually win over Lenore's trust. Yazmin tearfully reveals she was afraid to become friends with him because all the other children with whom she became friends were killed by being transformed into figurines held in Natacha's cabinet. Alex realizes each of the figurines still has their personal effects, such as watches and earrings they had in real life and deduces since none have a unicorn necklace, Unicorn Girl must successfully have managed to escape. He and Yazmin search through Unicorn Girl's notes and discover a recipe for a sleeping potion she used on the witch, intending to steal her keys. The pair make the potion and Lenore slips it into Natacha's perfume bottle, which she habitually douses herself in each night.

When she falls asleep, they steal her keys and open the door to a wooded area. They escape, but soon realize the woods are just another area contained within the apartment. Lost, they eventually find a cottage made of candy, only to be caught by Natacha and brought down to the cottage's basement. There, Natacha reveals she is Unicorn Girl. She was lured in by the original witch but escaped, only to find her parents had moved away. Thus leaving her alone. Nowhere to stay, she returns to the witch's home where she studied witchcraft under the witch and eventually managed to subdue her using her obsession with scary stories to lull her to sleep. The new tragic scary stories Alex reads her each night helps to keep the witch asleep, while Natacha harvests her magic in the form of the perfume bottles she uses. She threatens Yazmin and demands Alex tell her the story of why he intended to burn his Night books, stating his fear of telling the story makes it the ultimate scary story. Alex sadly starts to tell the story. On his birthday, his best friend admitted he was embarrassed to be seen with him because he was obsessed with scary stories. As a result, no one attended his birthday party; Alex felt so ashamed and hurt that he resolved to burn his stories and hide what made him special. This mollifies Natacha and the sleeping witch, but Alex ends the story by saying that he was glad he was kidnapped because he met Yazmin and Lenore, friends who value him and his speciality.

The sleeping witch is awoken by this happy ending and overpowers Natacha, who drops her perfume bottle. Yazmin grabs it and flees with Alex and Lenore. Using Natacha's magic, Yazmin opens the front door, allowing them to exit to Alex's apartment complex. The witch follows them as they flee to the furnace room, planning on eating them. Alex manages to distract her with a scary story he invented and before he can finish, he throws his Night book into the open furnace. The witch dives after it to know how the story ends while he and Yazmin push her in, killing her. They return to his worried parents and he introduces Yazmin and Lenore as his best friends. Yazmin is reunited with her parents.

They continue to be friends, with Yazmin giving him a new notebook and encouraging his passion for writing scary stories. Meanwhile, the children's figurines in Natacha's cabinet begin to move and break free, while Natacha cackles and it is revealed that she survived her fight with the witch.

Production

In June 2019, it was announced that Netflix was developing an adaptation of Nightbooks, with Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Laconis writing the script. In October 2020, it was announced that Krysten Ritter, Winslow Fegley and Lidya Jewett would star in the film and that David Yarovesky would direct. The film was produced by Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert through Ghost House Pictures, and by Mason Novick and Michelle Knudsen through MXN Entertainment.

Principal photography took place from October 14 to December 17, 2020, in Toronto.

Release/Reception

The film was released on Netflix on September 15, 2021.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Its contents may be a bit busy and overly familiar, but Nightbooks offers a fun—and actually fairly scary—gateway to horror for younger viewers. " Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 5 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Meagan Navarro, writing for horror magazine Bloody Disgusting, gave the film three out of five stars and wrote that "Nightbooks takes a while to warm up, but the back half brings the gateway horror fun" (..) adding that "It’s silly, whimsical, and creative, with a charming pair of leads. It’s for the young and the young at heart, wrapping a very familiar tale in creative horror-fantasy packaging. Using The Lost Boys’ song “Cry Little Sister” as a rallying anthem certainly helps."

My Review

Nightbooks is a new Netflix original kids fantasy-horror movie based on the book under the same name. In the movie, Alex, who has a passion to write scary stories, get trapped in a wicked witch’s magical apartment and finds out that the only way to survive is by telling spine-tingling horror stories to the witch, Natacha. Meanwhile he also tempts to escape from the witch, together with another prisoner. Even though I didn’t like the first few minutes as stuff were just happening, I started to like the movie when it came on track. As this is a kids horror movie, the scary scenes were all family friendly but some of them might be very terrifying for younger viewers. The movie even shows that original versions of some beloved classic tales were darker than the ones we knew. That might really upset small children. I love how they showed each of Alex’s scary stories in a wonderful technique with a red colour background and black and white characters.

I mainly watched this though for Krysten Ritter, she plays Jessica Jones in Netflix's Marvel Series Jessica Jones and I loved her in that {also her outfits in this are on flique, wild, wacky and sassy - I'm not really into fashion but her outfits are awesome}. Plus I can also relate to the little lad who's the leading role in the movie; due to his love for writing stories and the 80s movie The Lost Boys.

The movie in a nutshell, shows the major problem of different odd kids with strange passions, who are called in various kinds of names and being amused even by the only friend they have. It also tells such people to ignore haters and continue to follow your true passion along with your true friends who always stick with you and admire you of who you are. Even Natacha gave a very valuable piece of advice for story writing which is that you must always include the truth for your story because it becomes more powerful when it is more truthful. Nightbooks is an amazing kids fantasy-horror movie which speaks a valuable major topic that should be spoken more often. I suggest giving it a watch if you haven't already, if you have Netflix, it's not a waste of your time. 5/10!