Anthology horror is a genre that I have a tough time with. Short stories are difficult to write, and if anything, short films are even more of a lost art. Trying to link them all together, thematically (Trick ‘r Treat) or stylistically (V/H//S) is an added challenge. So when I encounter a horror anthology that manages to find a new way to link those short pieces and is overall excellent, I get excited. Scare Me, Josh Ruben’s underseen 2020 horror film, gets me excited.
“You scare me, I’ll scare you.”
Fred (Josh Ruben) is a ‘creative’. He writes, directs, and acts — for an advertising agency. But he wants more. He wants to be a novelist. With some time and money on his hands after a breakup, Fred rents out a small cabin in the wilderness so he can really start work on his novel. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much beyond a super basic idea.
Out for a jog, he meets Fanny (Aya Cash), another writer renting another cabin. But unlike him, Fanny has already achieved a modicum of success. Her debut novel, Venus, was a huge hit, both commercially and critically. When a snowstorm brings a power outage, Fanny swings by Fred’s cabin, so the two writers can talk shop. What are they working on? What have they done?
Realizing that Fred is an amateur and bored out of her mind, Fanny comes up with a fun way to pass the night: The two can swap scary stories until the power returns.
“Let’s tell each other scary stories.”
One of the most novel changes Scare Me makes to the anthology horror genre is that it never cuts away from Fred and Fanny. We live in the cabin with them. Instead of jumping to a series of short films, the two act out their stories for one another. Ruben uses shadows and sound effects to ‘enhance’ the stories, letting quick cuts allow one person to play multiple roles. But mostly we’re just watching two people talk.
It’s enrapturing.
A lot of the credit goes to Aya Cash. Cash is probably best known for her deeply prickly star turn on FX’s You’re the Worst. She brings an edge to Fanny that I found fascinating — Fanny is both an expert who is offering genuinely good advice, a confident storyteller in her own right, but also just a little bit cynical, like there’s an edge of mockery there that she can’t quite shake. It comes out in the characters she writes in her stories, many of whom are naifs whose untimely fate is a result of their overinnocence. And yet, the few moments when she is asked to be genuine, there’s a real hesitation to her. Cash gives a layered, nuanced performance.
Ruben, by far the less experienced actor of the pair, wrote his own part well. Fred is an ad man, a guy who is used to being a little fake with people. If Fanny’s characters tend towards naivete, Fred’s tend towards broad physical gestures and big emotions. He’s not an improviser, not even really a storyteller, and this lets Ruben fall back and follow Cash’s lead for much of the film. Scare Me lives and dies on the stories-within-the-story, and Ruben made the right choice in letting the strengths and weaknesses of those short bits come from the characters themselves.
“I don’t know any scary stories.”
So many horror short stories, particularly in film, are more a premise than an actual story. There’s no character development, no real narrative. There’s a hook, and hopefully some creature effects. Scare Me works by playing with those expectations. As Fred tells his first story, about a werewolf attack, she points out that he had a basic idea, but that doesn’t make it a story. By having this conversation in the film itself, it reframes the short films as character studies. Fred’s werewolf story is about his insecurity and shallowness being put on display by a more talented writer. Fanny’s ghost dog tale is her way of showing off, asserting her confidence. The Edible Arrangements story is about her teaching him, gently correcting basic ideas into something more inventive.
Scare Me manages to walk this tight rope for most of the film’s runtime. Sadly, the final ‘story’ is by far the weakest. Despite a lot of sharp, character-driven writing for much of the show, Scare Me ends with the most conventional spook-’em-ups imaginable. It’s not that Ruben doesn’t build to the conclusion. The conclusion just… isn’t particularly interesting. In a movie that wrestles earnestly with character and narrative, cliche and commentary, the inability to wrap things up feels like a serious problem.
“Then come up with them, because you’re a writer.”
Despite a lackluster ending, though, this was overall a genuine delight. You might have noticed, if you were to look at my reviews overall, an interest in the way story works. The wikification of storytelling has led to a lot of people taking stories too literally as a cohesive object in and of themselves. This has led to what critic Dan Olson has dubbed ‘The Thermian Argument,’ in which stories are treated as discovered objects with strict internal logic.
But stories are reflections of the people who worked on them. Part of what I love about Scare Me is the way it understands and portrays that idea. Fred and Fanny approach creating their stories in different ways, and this leads to different characters, motivations, and inspirations. What does the storyteller care about? What interests them? Who interests them?
Despite a weak ending, these questions made this a compelling and fascinating film. Scare Me is a smart, funny story about short, scary stories.