Nightbooks Review: Horror For Kids

"Nightbooks" takes its name from Alex (Winslow Fegley), a young boy so obsessed with horror stories that he fills notebooks — which he dubs his "nightbooks" — with tales of his own about haunted playgrounds and deadly vampires. Alex loves horror so much that his parents center his birthday parties around the genre, so much that his room is a shrine to Fangoria magazine and movies like "The Lost Boys," so much that ... well, it's actually starting to cause some problems. Driven by an episode of schoolyard mockery that's led him to believe he's a weirdo for loving horror so much, Alex flees his family apartment one night and slips right into a trap. It seems a witch (Krysten Ritter) has set up shop in the building, capturing children in her own enchanted apartment, and Alex has fallen prey to her appetites.

But this is not a witch who just wants to devour children whole, especially in Alex's case. Once she learns that he loves to write nightbooks of his own, the witch is especially interested in Alex's stories, and basically creates an "Arabian Nights"-style arrangement with him: If he keeps telling her new stories, he gets to stay alive. But of course, Alex is after more than survival, and with the help of Yazmin (Lidya Jewett) — the other child in the witch's endless apartment prison — he hopes he can find a way back to his family.

Even within this initial setup, there's a lot of rich thematic and narrative territory to mine, and Daughtry and Iaconis' strip takes full advantage. On the surface, the setup of the witch's apartment means there's no shortage of new adventures for Alex and Yazmin, whether we're talking about the seemingly endless library that stretches up to the sky, or the nursery where terrifying plants wait to be brewed into potions. On a deeper thematic level, of course, there's plenty of room for exploration of what it means to tell stories as a means of self-preservation, and how stories and our connection to them can save us. That adds a layer of not just depth but maturity to a story that, thanks to Yarovesky's playful direction, still very much plays like a narrative for kids interested in spooky stories.