Guillermo Del Toro’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Jangly Man Trailer Released

Guillermo del Toro and director André Øvredal are taking the book that started so may kids’ association with the horror genre, and turning into the late-summer blockbuster, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The film – like the book by Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell that inspired it – is an anthology of scary stories, and the featured creature of this latest trailer is none other than The Jangly Man!

You can watch the new trailer for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark above, and get the full breakdown on the Jangly Man, below!

The Jangly man is from the original book, and Guillermo del Toro himself took the time to craft the creature for this movie. In a LA Times feature from Comic-Con 2019, we got to learn more about del Toro and his visual effects team bringing the Jangly Man to life:

“A decomposing corpse that is very much alive, the Jangly Man has a lopsided face with a menacing expression, including two sets of teeth in one smiling mouth. At times he has six appendages, and delivers frights while both standing upright and crawling backwards.

Played by contortionist Troy James (“Hellboy,” “Shadowhunters” and the upcoming “It: Chapter Two”) in a foam-latex suit, the Jangly Man is an amalgamation of a few drawings by Stephen Gammell, who illustrated the Alvin Schwartz book series on which the film is based.

…’We were creating designs from something that scared us as kids,’ added creature effects supervisor Mike Elizalde. ‘It was something that was really important for us to try to get right.’”

Here’s the full synopsis for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark:

“It’s 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind…but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time—stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah’s terrifying home.”

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark comes to haunt theaters on August 9th.