Every generation has their own personal examples of gateway horror. For me it was Jaws, as repeated viewings left me hankering for stronger stuff the way Bruce the Shark hungered for slow swimmers, but there have been plenty of other examples that have bridged the way enjoying the more darker genres on the market. But while they are all valid, there is perhaps no other franchise that fulfilled that niche more that R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, a series of teen lit books that graduated to form the basis of an anthology TV show during the mid nineties.
While either version didn’t play anywhere near as rough as, say, HBO’s Tales From The Crypt, it became a beloved and vital component to helping ensure new fans to the horror genre – “get ’em when they’re young” is the saying, I believe.
Well, in 2015, Goosebumps fittingly rose from the grave when life with breathed into its carcass by a new movie. Could this redux manage to deliver the requisite fan service expected while delivering an amusingly meta plot? Read on…
Zach Cooper and his mother, Gale, have moved to the town of Madison, Delaware in order for her to start her new job as vice principal of the local school, but while both of them are carrying the emotional baggage of losing the patriarch of their family only a year before – pretty standard for films like this, actually – Zach has his homesickness for New York temporary nixed when he bonds with literal girl next door, Hannah. However, complications arise when it seems that this homeschooled girl appears to have something of a strict and tyrannical father who forbids Zach to see Hannah anymore.
So far, so teen angsty – however, matters get more bizarre when Zach and his new and extremely cowardly friend, Champ, cook up a plan to break into their overprotective neighbour’s house to ensure his daughter is OK, however, what they find in return is the the reclusive patent is actually renowned teen horror author, R.L. Stine and the reason he’s been so stand offish is because he’s been guarding his Goosebumps manuscripts as each one I’d a portal that allows the monstrous villain of each story to gain passage to our world.
Before you can say “oops”, Zach and Champ have accidentally opened The Abominable Snowman Of Pasadena and unleashed a huge, savage yeti on the town of of Madison. However, the oopsies don’t stop there as in the chaos, the worst demon of the bunch us released in the form of the spiteful, plotting, evil ventriloquist doll known as Slappy. Soon Slappy is freeing his malevolent brothers and sisters to cause unspeakable carnage on the town. Can Stine, Zach, Hannah and Champ manage to stop a veritable monster menagerie before it downs Madison in a flood of killer clowns, vampire poodles, giant mantis’ and shorts wearing werewolves?
I have to be honest, despite my glowing endorsement of both R.L. Stine’s books and the subsequent TV show, I’ve never actually so much glanced at a page of a book nor glimpsed at a single minute of footage of the show as I was far too old to be into that sort of thing at the time. However, Stine’s influence was so prevalent, the fact that I’d even heard of him back in the day was fairly impressive enough and one of the reasons that Goosebumps: The Movie proves to be so much fun is that it can’t help but drag it’s prolific creator into the mix. In a cool, meta twist, R.L. Stine not only is a main character in this film, but in the movie he also wrote the Goosebumps series that everyone seems to have fond memories of – but before you start thinking that they’ve gone the Stephen King route where he made himself a vital component within his sprawling The Dark Tower series, Goosebumps plays this melding of reality and ridiculous mostly for laughs. Hence we get Jack Back playing the writer as a reclusive, bad tempered, vainglorious diva who has a running grudge against Stephen King and allows the actor to chew all the scenery he likes while fleeing from all kinds of various CGI beasties. That leaves the younger cast of Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush and Ryan Lee to keep things moving while trying to be likable – luckily they are and even though the film is somewhat laden with a few story telling issues, it moves at a breakneck pace as the plot changes up the various creatures that come after them.
The most glaring issue is that when you boil it down this movie really is just Jumanji with monsters that also chucks in some bits of Inkheart and Casper in for good measure. The main character is suffering a parental loss while dealing with the standard problems of fitting in after a drastic move, there’s a wacky aunt character and a bumbling police force and when all the spectral poop hits the fan, it’s a mad dash across town while the fantasy creatures progressively trash the place while curiously racking up zero fatalities. However, while it all feels very familiar, Goosebumps manages to scrawl down its own voice by being fast paced, surprisingly witty (the audiophile joke is resplendent and needs to be studied for future generations) and generally quite exciting.
However, the main difference that sets it apart from it’s peers is some cute fan service and some pretty cool monsters.
Leading the charge is arch villain Slappy, a ventriloquist doll also voiced by Black, who gives us a face to all the chaos as he sics his bestial bosom buddies on an unsuspecting population in a non-seasonal Gremlins situation. But where Robin Williams had to fend off wild animals in Jumanji, Goosebumps hits us with such sights as a gigantic preying mantis, an apelike Abominable Snowman, a werewolf and an army of psychotic garden gnomes that give each chase section a slightly different energy from one another that stops things from getting repetitive.
It may not exactly be groundbreaking, there’s a feeling that some of the adult’s plot arcs may have been jettisoned to keep the pace from flagging (Amy Ryan’s goofy mom literally is given nothing worthwhile to add from the second Slappy starts his rampage) abd a subplot concerning a secret about Hannah raises more questions than it answers, but overall, it’s a damn solid family movie that isn’t afraid to turn the flow of kiddie friendly horror up a little too high here and there. Yes, the gym shorts wearing lycanthrope may suffer from some iffy CGI, but the zombie attack is delivered rather impressively with more old school methods with lumbering actors in full ghoul makeup which always does my soul good to see.
While a lot of the fan service flew over my head like a levitating, vampire poodle due to my unfamiliarity with the source material, there was still enough cool shit to keep me entertained and a surprising amount of Stephen King references for a movie rated PG.
It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but Goosebumps proves to be very diverting fantasy flick that may prove to be perfect when trying to convert any young ‘uns over to more horror-centric fare. I mean, I’d still maybe give them a couple of years before you try them out on Hereditary or anything… but that’s just common sense.
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