Nightbooks is a 2021 American dark fantasy film directed by David Yarovesky and written by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis.

[1] Alex Mosher, a young boy from Brooklyn, New York, overhears his parents talking about how worried they are about his preoccupation with writing scary stories and their fear of how he will react to a recent incident.

Screaming in pain, Alex trashes his room, grabs his "Night books" and takes the elevator to the basement, planning to burn them in the furnace.

He awakens to find himself in the magical apartment of a beautiful witch named Natacha who shows him a closet full of clothes belonging to children who were "not useful to her".

Searching her vast library for inspiration, Alex finds notes in the margins of books detailing the escape plans of a trapped girl.

Natacha reveals that she was the Unicorn Girl, who after successfully escaping the original witch—who ate all her victims except Natacha—, was able to put her to sleep and returned to her home, only to find that her parents had moved away.

With nowhere to go, she returned, studied witchcraft, and eventually lulled the witch into a deep sleep, using scary stories due to her immense love for them.

Natacha and the sleeping witch are mollified, but suddenly Alex says that he is glad he was kidnapped because he met Yasmin and Lenore, friends who value him.

In June 2019, it was announced that Netflix was developing an adaptation of Nightbooks, with Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis writing the script.

[2] 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.

[3][4] The film was produced by Sam Raimi and Romel Adam through Ghost House Pictures, and by Mason Novick and Michelle Knudsen through MXN Entertainment.

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.

"[6] Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".