A fun, silly, family-friendly scare romp, “Goosebumps” is a ride on the world’s best kiddie roller-coaster.
Those of you hoping for a hard-R “Goosebumps” movie will be sorely disappointed. Honestly, if you’re looking for a hard-R “Goosebumps” movie, you deserve to be disappointed because you clearly don’t know your source material.
“Goosebumps” centers around Zach (Dylan Minnette), who relocates from New York to suburban Delaware with his mom (an inexplicably cast — but very welcome — Amy Ryan). The neighbors are young hottie Hannah (Odeya Rush) and her mysterious, and seemingly unnecessarily gruff father (Jack Black), who implores young Zach to stay away from his house and his daughter, despite Hannah’s obvious overtures toward him.
As it turns out, the father is R.L. Stine, author of the famed “Goosebumps” series of children’s horror novels, with books featuring characters like an abominable snowman, a creepy ventriloquist dummy, alien invaders and giant insects. However, he lives the life of a hermit with his daughter because, as we find out, the reason his books are so successful is that the characters he imagines are brought to life by a magical typewriter (stay with me here).
Stine keeps the monsters locked away in the books he writes, but merely opening the books can unleash them upon the world. And of course Zach, not knowing any better, inexplicably does just that.
Soon all of Stine’s monstrous creations are loose and wreaking havoc, and only Stine, Zach, Hannah, and Zach’s annoying friend Champ (Ryan Lee) can stop them.
As you can see, this is pure kiddie-horror fare, with safe scares, always tinged with more than a little comedic relief. It is pure Nickelodeon stuff, but done in a somewhat more entertaining way than usual, and with a higher level of talent and production value. (Don’t believe me? Try an episode of “Every Witch Way” once or twice. Ugh.).
There are plenty of unbelievable scenarios, including an “abandoned” theme park sitting within walking distance of Zach’s and Hannah’s houses (which you know will come into play later) that can be turned on with the flip of a switch. If that was in my neighborhood as a kid, it would have been crawling with kids at all hours.
“Goosebumps” is as safe as can be, horror designed for a new generation of readers. As someone with three kids who often struggle to develop an interest in reading, it’s a welcome enticement for them to seek out and take a look at the source material, and something that I find more interesting and entertaining than fare like the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” or “Princess Diaries”-type films.
It’s not quite a triumph, but if you were a “Goosebumps” fan as a kid, or have kids of your own, there are certainly worse ways to spend a couple of hours at the movies.