Save for a small handful of recent films like “The House with the Clock in Its Walls” or the “Goosebumps” movies — nearly all with Jack Black as comic relief — chillers for children are an uncommon and somewhat dicey proposition. For horror filmmakers even interested in trying, they have to hit an exceedingly narrow target, offering enough scares and intensity to delight intrepid tweens without sending them diving under their parents’ comforters with nightmares. Based on J.A. White’s novel, “Nightbooks” will certainly push its audience to the limit with its unrelenting fusillade of jump scares, black magic and campfire stories, but

Co-produced by Sam Raimi through his Ghost House Pictures shingle, “Nightbooks” often feels like a kid-friendly version of Raimi’s “The Evil Dead II,” with its haunted locale, its magical books flush with ancient specters and even an enchanted forest sequence that deploys his deranged Pov camera technique. Though...