The year: 1997. The place: the Sizzler in Indio, California. The month: October.
Before they moved to Fresno, my grandma and grandpa belonged to a senior-citizen social group called Sharing Is Caring. Every Saturday afternoon, the group would gather together in the Sizzler's conference room and have their club meeting, which essentially amounted to a weekly raffle.
Usually, us grandkids were barred from these events. One week, however, our parents were out of town, and we were too young to be left alone. Knowing the meeting would be boring, I took along a book: Goosebumps #10. The Ghost Next Door. The saddest of the Goosebumps books. As I read, an older couple came by and asked what I was reading. I showed them, and they said some generic "That's nice" comments.
Flash forward to Christmas, that same year. I'm at my grandparents' house again, and there's a big package under the tree with my name on it. The gift, however, was from a person whose name I didn't recognize (but who was in the Sharing is Caring group). Curious, I tore the paper off the package, revealing a cardboard box. I opened the box and gasped. The box was filled with Goosebumps books!
It was those books that made me the horror fan I am today. Most of the books have since faded away into the back rooms of my mind, but the better ones (books like Attack Of The Mutant, Phantom Of The Auditorium, Piano Lessons Can Be Murder, The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp, and Night Of The Living Dummy II) remain vivid in my memory.
So, yeah, the Goosebumps novels are important to me. So, when I heard that the series was getting a big-screen adaptation, it immediately became a must-see attraction for me.
Yesterday, I planned my whole day around seeing the film. I bought my ticket early. I bought my bucket of popcorn and made my way into the darkened theater, trembling with anticipation.
Did the movie live up to my expectations? Well...
The movie starts in the same way that every Goosebumps book starts; with a kid moving to a strange new town. In this case, the kid is a teenager named Zach (Dylan Minnette) and the town is Madison, Delaware. Zach wastes no time in falling in love with Hannah (Odeya Rush), the pretty girl next door. Unfortunately, he also runs afoul of her strange father (Jack Black), who happens to be R.L. Stine, the author of the Goosebumps novels.
After seeing some strange goings-on inside the Stines' house, Zach takes it upon himself to investigate. Zach and his friend Champ (Ryan Lee) break into the Stine residence to investigate and find the original manuscripts of all the Goosebumps novels. For some reason, however, each manuscript is locked shut. The two boys find the key to the scripts and open them, unleashing a horde of monsters upon Madison. Now, Zach and Champ must team up with R.L. and Hannah to send the monsters back to the pages from whence they came.
The movie is pretty well-made. Javier Aguirresarobe, the cinematographer, does a great job of lighting the movie, giving the film an inviting look even as it sets out to scare you. Jim May does a great job of editing the action scenes together; he gives them a kinetic pulse that draws the audience in. The production designer did a great job of giving the movie an authentic small-town feel; the locations are impeccably chosen, and the home interiors depict the craftsman-like/ranch-house that's so popular in the Pennsylvania/Delaware area.
The script is faulty, but not horribly so. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski take care to pack the script with lots of references to Goosebumps novels, attempting to appeal to us millennials who loved the books. Alexander and Karaszewski also do a fine job giving their script the goofy/scary tone that the books pulled off so well; there are a few jokes that don't land well, but, for the most part, the dialogue is funny (particularly the scene where Zach criticizes R.L. Stine's writing).
The actors do a decent job with their roles. Jack Black is hit-and-miss for me, but he's in a less-annoying mode here; he plays R.L. Stine with the perfect blend of strangeness and warmth. Ryan Lee is fairly annoying as Champ, but that's the fault of the script, not the actor. Dylan Minnette really does a fine job as Zach, though; he's definitely more likable than most of the onscreen teenagers we've seen lately. Yes, he is smarter than most of the adults, but he's also respectful of his elders, which makes for a refreshing change. He also has a fairly quick wit, which is unusual for teenagers (both on- and off-screen).
So, if the movie is so well-made, why did I leave the theater feeling disappointed? That's the thing: I don't really know. I think it might have something to do with the amount of nostalgia I brought into the theater: I had such high expectations that no movie could hope to live up to them.
I also think my disappointment had something to do with the fact that none of my favorite Goosebumps books were mentioned! I can understand why that's the case; my tastes lean more toward the more Twilight Zone-flavored novels than the monster-rally books. I know that the Zone-themed books would have been harder to translate to the screen, but I'm still disappointed that they weren't featured.
Overall, Goosebumps is a solid movie. The blend of laughs and scares is sure to appeal to kids, just as it has since the 1990s. Maybe it'll even appeal to you, if you're a nostalgic, horror-loving millennial. Just don't go in expecting too much, I guess!
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