13 Nights of Shocktober: Goosebumps

by A.J.

Happy Halloween! The countdown is over and Halloween is finally upon us. Tonight, hopefully, you'll be relaxing, eating some candy, and watching a scary, or not-so-scary, movie. There are a lot of options for tonight and I hope I've been of some help. Here is my final recommendation to help bring an end to Shocktober:

Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween!

Viewer Beware, You’re in for a Scare

Goosebumps (2015)

Even if you weren’t into horror as kid, chances are pretty good you still knew about the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine and maybe even read a few of the spooky children’s books. When I was a kid in the 1990’s, it was impossible to avoid Goosebumps. The books were at every book store, library, school book fair, and there was also the TV series on Fox hosted by Stine himself. Long after I lost interest in the books, Goosebumps continued to be a presence in kid’s pop culture and finally made it to the big screen in 2015.

Goosebumps, the movie, isn’t a specific adaptation of any one of the 60 plus books, but It incorporates elements from several books into an original story. The books were most memorable for their monsters and plot twists, and the screenplay by Darren Lemke and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski uses a clever device to put the most memorable monsters together in a universe with new characters, including Stine himself. The result is a smorgasbord of monstrous spooky fun.

Teenage Zach (Dylan Minnette) and his mom, Gale (Amy Ryan), move to a small town where she will be the new high school vice principal and he’ll be the new kid whose mom is a vice principal. One bright spot for Zach is meeting the girl next door, Hannah (Odeya Rush), who he comes to believe is being held prisoner by her mysterious and reclusive father. Zach and his self-appointed new best friend, Champ (Ryan Lee), break into her house to attempt a rescue. Once inside they learn that Hannah’s father is author R.L. Stine (Jack Black) and unknowingly unleash the monsters trapped within Stine’s original manuscripts. The teens, along with Stine, have to recapture the monsters before the town is destroyed.

Jack Black’s highly stylized performance as Stine sets the tone for the whole movie: over the top but with just the right amount of self-awareness. Amy Ryan and Jillian Bell, as Gales’ sister, are a welcome presence, as they would be in any movie. The teen actors do a good job playing believable teens and carrying the action of the movie.

The monsters are nearly all CGI and fit right in to the movie visually. Since the monsters are all creations of Stine’s imagination, their artificial look actually works to the movie’s advantage. The Werewolf of Fever Swamp has a memorable sequence chasing the kids around a grocery store and the Abominable Snowman of Pasadena rampages through the town, but the main villain is Slappy, from Night of the Living Dummy. Slappy has a malevolent and devious personality. He is intent on getting revenge on Stine for locking him away; the fact that he is a ventriloquist dummy also makes him inherently creepy. Zach and his mom and the other teens are not especially memorable characters, but they service the story adequately. It’s Jack Black that loads up the fictionalized Stine with so much personality that it brings the whole movie to life.

The Goosebumps books introduced a whole generation of kids to horror and I think movie will serve as a good entry point for kids to (age appropriate) horror stories. Goosebumps is a smorgasbord of horror themed fun and though it still retains some of the dark edge of the books, it never gets too intense or scary. This is a great movie to watch with kids that are interested in horror, or kids that just want to watch something spooky for Halloween or a stormy day. And if you’re a grownup, it’s still a spooky fun time.