RL Stine’s Goosebumps finally hits movie screens

Hannah and Zack join forces with Stine, Champ and a handful of other characters to try to right the wrong and return these creepy storybook creatures to their rightful home. Merging fiction and non-fiction, turns out that Hannah’s dad is R.L. Stine, the famous author of the “Goosebumps” series of books for kids.

BLACK: Yeah, no, he’s not a sinister dude at all. The only one who’s really given a chance to shine is Slappy the Dummy, also voiced by Black, who acts as a ringleader of sorts. The adventure just so happens to be a Goosebumps plot, and that’s where the movie flies off the tracks in the best possible way. Case in point: Darth Vader! What good is Star Wars without Darth Vader?

As for Stine himself?

In 2007 when I was hired by The New York Times, Stine started seeing my byline in the paper and looked me up. I don’t know, I was this weird kid.

Another issue I had, which is a completely avoidable expenditure if you listen to me, comes with its 3D.

“So if you see a Daft Punker out there, leave me the hell alone!”

Stine somehow imagined the monsters from Goosebumps into reality and used the manuscripts to keep them imprisoned.

“And I thought, forget the amusing stuff, the kids want to be scared!” I’m sure Tim drew it but I’m not sure whose idea it was.

“When we go to Disneyland, I am like Mickey Mouse, I am one of the attractions”, he said, recalling several instances when he was out with his boys in public. The movie can’t decide on a set of rules for Stine’s monster-creating or trapping-in-book powers.

Overall this is a fun, though scary, Halloween film. The success of R.L. Stine’s world-renowned series is hard to miss, with over 400 million copies sold worldwide, but since he didn’t have a direct part in writing the screenplay for this film, I refused to expect anything substantial from it. As quickly as he expresses his interest, it’s rebuffed – not by Hannah, but by her mysterious and controlling father, Mr. Shivers (Jack Black).

It gets most of the character background out of the way early on in the first third of the film, which gives itself room to run free for the last hour or so. He has a lot of young kids so he wanted us to be scary, but lean towards the humor and the thrills and not be traumatic. Just like his stories jump off the page and chill readers, Stine’s monsters come to life in the movie. However, it lets most of that information sit idle for the rest of the film-some of which never really gets revisited. “But usually, I am very rude to other people when I’ve got my boys with me, not very rude but just, like, ‘Nope, not today”. The story puts dozens of Stine’s monsters into a one film, with the author as the main character. But he has that cruel intention behind the eyes, and it’s his brilliance that makes him scary. “Or maybe there’d be a giant hamster?” he says.

Jack Black will make you laugh, and you’ll find yourself smiling at the silly scenarios and over-the-top monsters. And they became real to me. They trample across the town’s ultra-amateur police squad and head toward the unsuspecting kids holding that evening’s high school prom, bludgeoning every human they encounter with comic enthusiasm. And this was my opportunity to do that, you know, even though it’s much less horrifying than “The Shining”, obviously. “There are always going to be all kinds of surprises”.