Score: 4.5/5
“Goosebumps” the movie makes the monsters from the popular book series as real as they seem to children reading them.
“Goosebumps” tells the story of highschooler Zach (Dylan Minnette) after he moves to Madison, Delaware, with his mother following the death of his father. Zach immediately finds it hard to make friends in his new school due to his mother being the new vice principal.
An easily frightened student ironically named Champ (Ryan Lee) becomes Zach’s only friend at the school. Zach’s next door neighbor, Mr. Shivers (Jack Black), keeps to himself and rarely leaves his home. Shivers’ daughter Hannah (Odeya Rush) is much more outgoing and befriends Zach, against Shivers’ wishes.
After hearing Hannah scream, Zach and Champ break into Shivers’ house to rescue her. Upon entering the house, the two stumble upon a bookshelf full of locked, original Goosebumps manuscripts. After unlocking the manuscript for “The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena,” the creature from the book escapes, leaving Hannah to chase after it.
After a near death experience with the Abominable Snowman, Shivers turns out to be R.L. Stine himself.
When the group arrives back at Stine’s home, they realize that other books have been opened as well, including “Night of the Living Dummy.” The main villain from the book Slappy the ventriloquist dummy has been released and is freeing the other creatures from the other manuscripts in order to get revenge on Stine for locking them away. Slappy then burns the books in order to make sure the creatures never go back to their cages on the page.
In order to trap the monsters once and for all, Stine determines he must get to his typewriter locked in the high school to write a final story where all of the monsters are trapped away. The plot becomes a mad dash to the high school with the monsters on the heroes’ tails the entire time.
“Goosebumps” does fans right by bringing all of Stine’s most popular creatures to the big screen in a way that lets them run amok together, rather than keeping them separate.
This might be a curse to some because viewers who have not read the books may not appreciate the references or pick up on hints on how to defeat the creatures. For those that have read the books will appreciate the film for how closely the monsters resemble themselves in the books.
Keeping with Stine’s method of storytelling, there is a twist toward the end of the film that audience members do not see coming.
One of the most important aspects in production with a movie full of monsters is special effects. Fortunately, “Goosebumps” does effects right. The monsters genuinely look real at many points, and Slappy is downright creepy.
The film balances tones of humor and suspenseful situations well in the same way present in the books. There are points in the movie that feel as though they could be straight out of a book Stine wrote.
“Goosebumps” is a fun Halloween movie that works well for children and adults alike. Fans of the book series will find the film to be an instant classic, worth rewatching over and over again.