The phrase “family friendly” is a bit of a double edged sword. On one hand, there are some amazing PG rated movies out there. On the other hand, calling something “family friendly” tends make people think a movie is dumbed down or boring. This year, Netflix released Nightbooks, a movie based on a 2018 horror-fantasy children’s book. It definitely piqued my interest.

Alex (Winslow Fegley) loves writing scary stories. After a particularly bad day at school, he trashes his room and decides to destroy all of his “Nightbooks,” the notebooks that house his creations. On the way to the apartment building’s furnace, he gets coerced into one of the other apartments. Soon, he finds that he is trapped in the apartment of an evil witch, Natasha (Krysten Ritter), who forces him to tell a scary story every night after dinner. Along with Yazmin (Lidya Jewett), another child Natasha trapped, Alex must find a way to leave the apartment and get back to his parents.

It took me a little while to get into the plot of Nightbooks. I thought it was going to be another anthology movie like Twilight Zone: The Movie or Tales from the Darkside. Boy, was I wrong. The stories within the plot are but a small part of the actual storyline. As a matter of fact, when I thought we were reaching the end of the film, I found that we were actually only halfway through it. I couldn’t figure out how they were going to squeeze another 45 minutes out of a story that seemed to be over. And those 45 minutes were the best parts of the movie.

On top of the pretty amazing storyline, the acting was superb. Krysten Ritter was breath-taking as Natasha. Part of it was the special effects when she used her magic but a lot of it was Ritter’s take on the character. That’s not to say the kids didn’t do a great job as well. There wasn’t a time that I wasn’t convinced that these kids were scared that they were going to die at any minute.

I loved Nightbooks so much. This was the perfect example of how you could make a terrific movie with an extremely small cast. Yes, this was filmed at the end of 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Any movie that doesn’t look at this and feel bad that they couldn’t pull off something so wonderful should feel ashamed of itself.

Well, I think you get the idea. You should definitely watch this movie. Actually, you should add it to your annual Halloween movie list along with Hocus Pocus and The Nightmare Before Christmas. I hope they make a sequel and I hope it is just as good.