Stay Tuned #55: Goosebumps (Disney+ Season One)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Ticketmaster

I'm confused, Ticketholders. And disappointed in the lack of originality in visual media over the past few years. On top of the Fear Street trilogy and the TV series I'm reviewing today, I've also been watching the first season of Yellowjackets on Netflix because Paramount+ (like a broken floor scrubber) has a lot of buffering issues. All three are either set in or flash back to the 90s, and include a lot of the same songs and relationship dynamics (troubled same-sex couple, love triangle, toxic relationship, etc.). So the plot points and characters start to bleed together (heh; horror puns...) after awhile. But that doesn't make them bad products on their own merits.

By my own actions, my merits (viewer analytics) have diminished significantly this month, so please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment your thoughts on the Goosebumps reboot at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue so I don't get possessed because I had to squat in a haunted house, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest hair-raising news on my content.

Unlike the original Goosebumps series, which was in an episodic anthology format (aside from the multi-part adaptations) like The Twilight Zone, Tales From the Darkside, or Tales From the Crypt, the 2023 reboot is a seasonal anthology show like American Horror Story, though it's unclear if Goosebumps (2023) will have a shared universe at this point, as season 2 (Goosebumps: The Vanishing) won't come out until next year.

Plotwise, the first season has a Nightmare On Elm Street premise with some Amityville/Conjuring flavor, beginning with the death of the troubled and reclusive Harold Biddle (Ben Cockell, of The Mysterious Benedict Society) at the hands of his friends, Nora (Suits' Rachel Harris), Ben (Heroes' Leonard Roberts), Victoria (Françios Yip, a.k.a. Ms. Yutani from the Aliens vs Predator franchise), Eliza (Van Helsing's Laura Mennell), and Sarah (Jason X's Lexa Doig). Burned to death in his basement (where we are shown a camera, a creepy-looking mask, and a worm farm, among other Goosebumps references; even if you "Stay Out Of the Basement," there's a cuckoo clock upstairs), Harold's spirit is confined there until English teacher Nathan Bratt (Jeepers Creepers' Justin Long) inherits the property and unwittingly unseals the basement with his blood.

Justin Long is a gem in this. His character serves as the Stine analog here, being an aspiring horror author, but when he's soon possessed by Biddle's ghost, we're treated to Jim Carrey levels of rubberized physical comedy and enjoyably campy villainous face-pulls, combined with an awkward, goofy, but at times chilling line delivery.

What ensues from Biddle's release is the familiar Elm Street motive of a burned villain taking supernatural revenge on his killers by targeting their children in the fictional town of Port Lawrence (because that's Stine's middle name). First, Ben's son, Isaiah (Eastenders' Zack Morris) has his football prospects jeopardized after he finds Biddle's camera in the basement during a Halloween party (good, modern adaptation of Say Cheese And Die). Then Victoria's daughter, Isabella (Senior Year's Ana Yi Puig) puts on Biddle's Haunted Mask at the same Halloween party when she starts feeling invisible at school. I like the update to the bullying aspect (alienation and cyber-bullying as opposed to pranks and physical bullying) and her transformation is more monstrous and threatening than in the original, but the mask itself is plain and underwhelming at first. The Cuckoo Clock Of Doom (originally a "teach the bratty sibling a lesson" story where the main character gets younger every time he goes to sleep and has to fix the cursed clock before he ages out of existence) gets a cool update when Eliza's son James (Miles McKenna, of Miles Chronicles) hits his head on the clock at the party and finds out what would happen to Bill Murray if all of his Groundhog Day loop Variants turned evil and wanted revenge. It's derivative and the "Dupes" explode into "Dupe goop" (because they're saving Monster Blood for another season, I guess) when struck with blunt objects, but it serves the overall plot well enough. Next comes a body horror take on Go Eat Worms, where Eliza's son, Lucas (Will Price of the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown) becomes even more reckless than usual when his body is taken over by Biddle's worms, making him feel like he's almost invincible in his efforts to honor his late daredevil father with increasingly dangerous viral stunts. The CGI mass of worms is a formidable threat in the end, but lacks the low-budget, ambitious charm of the practical effects in the 90s adaptation. And despite his portrayal up to this point as a generic idiot skater bro from the 90s born thirty years late, Lucas is probably the most interesting non-villain character in the season.

Which leaves Sarah's daughter, Margot (Star Trek: Picard's Isa Briones). In Reader Beware (an original episode), she gets trapped in the pages of Biddle's journal and learns the truth behind his death, making it the Fear Street 1666 of Goosebumps episodes and making things both more and less morally grey than first presented.

Throughout the second half of the season, we get a loose adaptation of Night Of the Living Dummy with Harold and his ancestry as the focus in flashback (the basic premise of Dummy II and III with the lead getting pranked and used by Slappy is the only recognizable part for me) as it builds more into what I think is Slappy's expanded lore from more recent books after he pretty much took over the brand and started getting his own spinoffs. So basically, Mr. Bratt and Harold Biddle are descended from this failed magician named Ephraim who bought Slappy in the typical Goosebumps fashion (desperately and on the cheap) to revitalize his act, but when he learned that Slappy wanted him to help end the world somehow, Ephraim Bratt (iZombie's Eddie Jemison) buried him in the basement wall of his house where he would stay until the Biddles moved in in the 90s and Harold found him. But when he falls under Slappy's influence (behaving erratically and violently like he's addicted to drugs), Harold's friends break in, leading to his accidental death as they steal Slappy and attempt to destroy him. Unfortunately, they have I Know What You Did Last Summer decision-making skills, so no one tries to go back in for Harold because living with second-degree manslaughter and conspiracy to conceal a crime is somehow better than being arrested for B&E and theft?

Another series-original episode, Give Yourself Goosebumps (named after the spinoff series), uses the Reader Beware plot again but with all of the kids trapped in the journal and working with the displaced Mr. Bratt (because it's a soul trap maybe?) to escape. Meanwhile, Nora tries to dispose of Slappy and is chased through a snowy mountain setting by Harold in Bratt's body, so it's kind of a Shining ripoff with a slow instrumental of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" playing the whole time.

With no mud monster, You Can't Scare Me is more like Give Yourself Goosebumps: Part Two with a Ghost Next Door resolution as Margot gets through to Harold, who shows Slappy what an 80s action movie villain death feels like and reunites with his parents' spirits who got out of the journal world somehow.

With everything seemingly back to normal, Mr. Bratt is just R.L. Stine now, trying to turn his and the kids' experiences into a book while they explore the possibilities of life after high school and their shifting priorities on a trip to Seattle. But because there's another episode and a half to get through, Bratt has to be all Say Cheese And Die Again stupid, and revives Slappy for inspiration to write a new ending to his book. This also revives Bratt's dead poodle as a CGI vampire-demon (which I think is a 2000 series reference?), but that's not too important. What matters is that Slappy is revealed to be the imprisoned soul of an immortal sorcerer named Kanduu (You're the Worst star Chris Geere, who also voices Slappy), a mortal soldier who stumbled upon an ancient shrine in the middle of a war (which is stupid because the hole he crashes through is massive so all belief must be suspended when he starts lighting fires and making magic words glow and no one follows him in to investigate where the light pulses are coming from) and learned magic that saved his life and gave him the power to...turn people into dummies. Also, the shrine is where that "Karru Marri Odonna Loma Molonu Karrano" chant comes from, but it does a variety of things (trapping Kanduu in the Slappy body, reforming the destroyed dummy body, turning someone into a life-sized dummy) that are different from the "you read the phrase so we are bound together and you are my slave, but you're still like, at least twice my size and I have no muscles so I'm no real threat to you and you can do whatever you want" context in the books and 90s adaptations, but not much better. What makes Slappy/Kanduu a threat in this season is his psychology game and his endgame. Once he intimidates Bratt into doing what Ephraim wouldn't, Kanduu is restored to his human body, his worldview twisted by centuries of perception that humanity will destroy itself with war because there is nothing left to fight. So he takes control of most of Port Lawrence so he can sacrifice them to release the Horrors back into the world and unite humanity against a common enemy. It's important to note here that Horrors are not just the curly-horned creatures who ran Horrorland in the books and TV episodes, but is suggested to refer to werewolves, ghosts, giant animals, Creeps, Monster Blood, mummies, vampires, other Stine creations, and anything he hasn't come up with yet. Basically, if it's scary, it's a Horror. Pretty sick and socially relevant villain plan if you ask me. And Chris Geere's chilling performance and the new Slappy design make this the most intimidating live-action version of the character to date. Unfortunately, Kanduu's one weakness is something I could do in kindergarten: reading backwards. So, he reverts to his former self, his control over everyone fades, and the only one to die in the ritual is him (dragged to Hell by the souls he damned in his lifetime)...and Isaiah (whom the de-powered Kanduu shoots while trying to shoot Margot)...almost. As a sort of main character, I don't get him. He's a modern guy written like a 90s macho football jock who steps up because he "doesn't want the women getting hurt," can't decide between the high school movie trope girlfriend and the childhood friend next door movie trope girlfriend until the former dumps him, and aside from the first episode and a few later moments, he doesn't do much. Morris gives him a ton of personality, but I gravitated toward the other characters more (particularly Lucas, Isabella, Eliza, and Margot). Speaking of Margot, she reads the spell to save Isaiah's life, and the season ends with Mr. Bratt possessed by Kanduu now.

Going in, I expected the 2023 reboot of Goosebumps to be a shallow reference dump of a thing, and it surprised me. It's not very original, the cast is probably too big and datedly written to care about them all, and things sometimes happen because they need to happen instead of fitting in naturally and/or feeling important. But the few adaptations in here are done well, and I love Long's and Geere's performances. Maybe I was influenced by lowered expectations,

but overall, I enjoyed this and I'm looking forward to season 2.

B+

Next week, I'm going to cover the Goosebumps movies for Halloween, so Stay Tuned for that, and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment your thoughts on the Goosebumps reboot at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue so I don't get possessed because I had to squat in a haunted house, 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.