Just the Ticket #161: Goosebumps & Haunted Halloween
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
Stolen from a secret bookcase in Jack Black's house and unleashed on the world in 2015, the first Goosebumps movie was directed by Rob Letterman (who started his career behind the camera co-directing Shark Tale, but would go on to direct Detective Pikachu and the first episode of the 2023 Goosebumps reboot series) based on a script by Darren Lemke (Lost - the movie where Machete tries to kill Scott Peterson after they rob a bank together, not the former hit TV show that came out the same year - Turbo, and the fourquels for Shrek and Kung Fu Panda) and story by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (known for award-worthy work like Ed Wood, The People Vs. Larry Flynt, and American Crime Story...but also the theatrical Problem Child movies and Agent Cody Banks). Also, Scholastic's Deborah Forte (Goosebumps 1995) is back in a production role (alongside five other production companies). So, with this mixed bag of mediocrity managing matters, how is the Goosebumps movie? It's one part "moving is the greatest terror," one part "whatever you do, don't go in there or touch anything, especially not that," one part Rear Window, one part The Harvest, one part The Sandlot, and two-thirds a "main characters versus a soulless CGI army of Goosebumps references, presented by Slappy" movie. Which is as okay as that sounds.
if that interpretation didn't result in the movie missing the delivery of its own message.
On the floor, three years later, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween stepped out the Fever Swamp without a Ludacris in sight.
or a Medicine Woman joke)
is Sarah Quinn, played by Madison Iseman of the Jumanji sequels. Goosebumps book formula requires there to be an annoying brother (Jeremy Ray Taylor, a.k.a. young Ben Hanscomb in the It movies), his adventurous best friend (Castle Rock's Caleel Harris), and a bully (Stranger Things' Peyton Wich); and Goosebumps movie formula requires there be a Goosebumps superfan (The Masked Singer judge and producer Ken Jeong), a pointless romantic subplot involving an embarrassing female relative (The Goldbergs' Wendy McClendon-Covey) and an SNL cast member (Chris Parnell), an appearance by R.L. Stine and/or "R.L. Stine," and Slappy as the main villain.
a.k.a. the Ticketmaster.
I am not Steve!
I have never played Minecraft.
I will never play Minecraft.
I will not watch the Minecraft movie.
Lego for life!
Enough Jack Black references; it's time to stop being a Shallow Hal and get back to The Holiday...by which I mean Halloween!
I've given myself plenty of Goosebumps this R.L. Stine October, and it's time to also give my thoughts on the Goosebumps movies, which is fine to do on a Thursday instead of a Friday because nostalgia.
So happy Throwback Thursday, happy TBT Anniversary, have a happy and Haunted Halloween, and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment your thoughts on the Goosebumps movies at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue so I don't accidentally end the world with stolen Stephen King manuscripts, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest hair-raising news on my content.
When the main character (13 Reasons Why star Dylan Minette) moves to small town Delaware for his mother's (killer bassoonist Amy Ryan from Only Murders In the Building) job as the new principal of his new school - which means that by comparison, Harold Biddle had it easy - he finds out that his next door neighbor is Jack Black playing Will Arnett playing R.L. Stine (as opposed to R.L. Stine, who usually plays R.L. Stine like Ben Stein playing R.L. Stine, and here has a cameo as the school's drama teacher, Jack Black, so I hope that wasn't too confusing). Also, R.L. Stine the movie character has a daughter named Hannah (Lady Bird's Odeya Rush). If you're an encyclopedic fan of Goosebumps, you'll probably figure out her twist on first name and next door neighbor status alone, and having just watched the 1995 series, I figured out the connection to one of my favorite episodes pretty quickly, too.
For some reason, there's also Champ (Super 8's Ryan Scott Lee), whom I just spent the movie calling "Dollar Menu McLovin'" because his whole arc is "cowardly Goosebumps nerd who wants to get laid," and Aunt Lorraine (SNL's Jillian Bell), whose entire character arc is "make meta references to Saturday Night Live, do stereotypical things a woman twice her age would do thirty years ago (like Bedazzling and crocheting and making food that would be purple in an anime), and get in R.L. Stine's pants."
Once I looked it up to remind myself that his name was Zach (add on several double-checks to make sure whether that ended with an "h" or a "k"), and Zach's Secret Window paranoia made him think that Stine was abusing Hannah, he and Champ break into the Stine house (among other misdemeanors and felonies), where they discover Stine's locked manuscripts. Because they've never seen Evil Dead or Jumanji or Cabin In the Woods or Candyman or any of the Night Of the Living Dummy episodes (which should exist because this is a fictional reality movie where R.L. Stine is a person and the Goosebumps books were popular enough that there is Goosebumps-themed Halloween merch in the sequel), they don't consider that the thing that's locked is locked for a reason and should probably stay locked, and out pops The Abominable Snowman Of Pasadena, whose rampage forces open several of the other books, particularly the aforementioned Night Of the Living Dummy, and the long-imprisoned, vengeful Slappy escapes, freeing the entire catalogue of monsters, including the Revenge Of the Lawn Gnomes (creepier and more impressive in the 90s episode), Fifi the poodle from Please Don't Feed the Vampires, The Haunted Car, The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp (whom Stine has to exposit by name, as opposed to one of the werewolves from Werewolf Skin or The Werewolf In the Living Room or Full Moon Fever, because werewolves pop up in Goosebumps almost as often as Slappy, Horrorland, summer camps, and ghosts), the invisible boy from My Best Friend Is Invisible (who doesn't make sense as a villain because he was the last human survivor of an alien invasion in the original...except that maybe he hates Stine for writing him that way and keeping him locked in that reality instead of treating him like family the way he did for Hannah?), and the giant mantis from A Shocker On Shock Street (which didn't make it into the 90s episode, but the episode was pretty cool without it).
In addition to playing a fictionalized R.L. Stine, Jack Black also voices the invisible boy and Slappy, and while I don't care for the design of the puppet (too polished and plain, compared to the 90s and 2023 versions), movie Slappy is at least interesting as a character. I don't mind that he completely differs in motivation from the books and episodes (because Night Of the Living Dummy Slappy is lame). Instead of the whole "trapped immortal wizard with a Napoleon complex who wants to enslave people one family at a time" thing from the books, he comes off more like a misguided revolutionary leader who seeks freedom for his people (the Goosebumps monsters), crossed with a neglected child. Which would be a cool interpretation of the character amidst the endless, tiring CGI mayhem (once the monsters were unleashed, I felt less like a kid in a Halloween store and more like I was being bludgeoned to sleep by Howard Hughes dual-wielding copies of Space Jam 2 and Ready Player One),
See, the Stine character mentions early on that the monsters in his books were created by him for two reasons: as surrogate friends and family, and as a way to cope with and externalize the fears in his head. But not only does Stine pick and choose his family (taking Hannah as his daughter, but ignoring the feelings of Slappy, the invisible boy, and others), he literally locks away his fears, allowing them to fester and twist and turn against him until they can no longer be contained and lash out at the world against his will. But I suppose that if he had somehow made friends with his fears instead of acting like a low-key villainous buffoon with ego problems, there wouldn't be a movie, would there?
In the end, Stine writes a new book on his reality-warping typewriter (like the one in The Blob That Ate Everyone) to suck in all of the escaped monsters (and Hannah...but not the invisible boy‽), Dollar Menu McLovin' gets some PG action, Stine and Aunt Lorraine become a thing for five minutes, Stine writes a new Hannah so Zach can be happy, too (and the audience can raise tons of existential questions about whether books and their sequels share a canon reality or there are multiple Slappys out there, if Hannah from the ending is the same Hannah as earlier in the movie or she's a new Hannah written to remember also being the old Hannah, if keeping her out of her source story is denying her soul resolution and rest,...), and the invisible boy writes a revenge story on Stine's typewriter as the credits roll.
There's some good meat on the bones here for a mostly safe, derivative, nostalgia-pandering horror comedy based on Goosebumps, and I got more out of it on this second watch, but aside from Zach, Slappy, and the Stines, the characters are stock plot devices, the monsters are visual pop-culture reference overload that doesn't always hit, and the plot itself is just Rear Window-into-Evil Dead-into-"Remember That‽" Presented By Slappy-into-Ghostbusters.
C-
I mean...that was a terrible, incongruous reference based solely on the "three years later" timeframe of release, and let's forget it ever happened.
With Rob Letterman stepping away due to scheduling conflicts (Detective Pikachu), Ari Sandel (whose first feature directing credit was The DUFF, though he'd won awards for directing short films before that) took the chair for the sequel. Jack Black and Odeya Rush were supposed to feature more prominently as returning characters, but Rush's part was omitted in the scripting process and Black's role was reduced to an uncredited "what did I miss?" cameo. Even his voice role as Slappy (because Slappy must be in every Goosebumps thing ever now) was replaced by Mick Wingert (the guy Disney and DreamWorks call when the cartoon, video game, or sequel can't afford Jack Black or Robert Downey, Jr.). Darren Lemke returned as story writer and shared scriptwriting credits with Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit and next year's Karate Kid sequel - which is either a legacyquel to the originals and Cobra Kai, or a direct sequel to the Jaden Smith Kung Fu Kid reboot).
The premise is a "main character is struggling to write an essay about her greatest fear so she can get into college" story set around Halloween, followed by "do the first movie again but with the index finger crooked slightly different," which makes the obvious course of events to have her be scared so she has something to write about and she gets into college, this story is happy end. Thankfully, the writers knew not to go the Say Cheese And Die Again route with her (because writing PG supernatural horror like it's an autobiographical essay didn't work for not-Ryan Gosling in junior high school, so it definitely won't work as a college entrance essay for Columbia), and took a more realistic approach by making failure, ordinariness, and writer's block the ultimate subject of her essay (with a little cliché help from the belated Stine).
Said MC (whom I had to look up, and made me conflicted as to whether I should make a The Lost World: Jurassic Park joke
In-universe, it's six years later and set in a part of New York that you know it’s fictional because it looks nothing like New York (as opposed to the fictional part of Delaware from the last movie, hinting that there may be condemned Stine houses all over the country with unfinished manuscripts hidden in them, which sounds like an amazing concept for a Supernatural-like television series), where the brother and his friend attend Daniel Webster Middle School. That's totally unimportant to the plot, but a reference worthy of cringe is worthy of mention, so I did because the Devil is in the details. Anyway, the boys have a salvage business and an unknown woman hires them to clear out the old Stine house, where they prove stupid enough to not only unlock the well-hidden, locked book that they find in the abandoned house, but read the card in the pocket of the creepy-looking (for a Goosebumps movie) ventriloquism dummy that appears out of nowhere immediately after they unlock the book.
I don't know if this has any basis in reality, but in this movie, the book is an unfinished "first" manuscript for a story called Haunted Halloween, and could have been the real first Living Dummy book. Later in the movie, it's just a Ghostbusters trap.
From the moment the boys read the spell, Goosebumps 2 just becomes a feature-length Night Of the Living Dummy story where Slappy has telekinesis, reanimation powers, and family issues. On Halloween. In a town with a functioning Tesla tower. And where Ken Jeong made a giant animatronic balloon spider. And where the local We Couldn't Afford Walmart has an aisle of Goosebumps merch because reasons.
Like Halloween candy, the reduction of actual Goosebumps references in favor of more generic horror creatures and randomly animated stuff is a mixed bag. Slappy is clearly a different incarnation from the first movie's version, and the Abominable Snowman and the Werewolf Of Fever Swamp are back (now joined by a Haunted Mask-wearing Chris Parnell and the Jack O'Lanterns - which sounds like a VeggieTales cover band), but that's it for references. The living gummy bears sequence, the flaming headless horseman, and the finale with the giant spider were pretty awesome for non-references. Even the showdown between Sarah and Slappy is superior to the first movie's resolution because the supporting characters are given something important to do and it has genuine personal stakes for the Quinns and their friends.
In the end, science prevails over magic and intelligence prevails over the dummy, everything goes back to normal, Covey and Parnell ship for five minutes, Slappy very clearly escapes being book-busted, and much like with the invisible boy at the end of the first, Slappy here writes his own story and traps "Stine" in it as the credits cut in.
Though it lacked a Hannah-level twist and didn't feature the fictionalized Stine or as many Goosebumps references, I think the more cerebral finale and the reduced feeling of brand overload give the sequel a slight edge.
C
And with that, R.L. Stine October comes to an end. Except that I can't figure out what to write for an ending...; I hope that doesn't come back to bite me on the ass....
Anyway, I also hope you all have a happy and Haunted Halloween, and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment your thoughts on the Goosebumps movies at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue so I don't accidentally end the world with stolen Stephen King manuscripts, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest hair-raising news on my content.
Ticketmaster,
Out for a scare!
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