Things That Go Bump In The Night

As always please note that this review contains spoilers.

Robert Lawrence Stein (or as he is more commonly referred to R.L. Stein) is widely known as the Stephen King of childrens literature due to his extensive writing in the genre of childrens horror. His work includes the series' Fear Street, Rotton School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and most famously Goosebumps which of course is where this review comes in.

Now I must confess that I had very little knowledge of the Goosebumps franchise prior to settling in to watch the new Goosebumps movie. Yes I knew there were books and of course the popular tv series which ran for four seasons between 1995 and 1998 but I have never read or watched either therefore I knew nothing of any of the stories or the characters that Stein had created.

Therefore I went into the film not expecting too much, basing this opinion solely on the fact that Jack Black is front and centre in the role of the author. Now I should quantify that comment by saying that I am not a huge JB fan, yes there have been many films that have he has either featured or starred in that I have enjoyed or even loved, High Fidelity, Mars Attacks, Nacho Libre and Tropic Thunder spring to mind, its just that after a while the joke wears rather thin and not unlike other actors it almost feels like JB is not really acting anymore, rather he is playing the same character in every performance and that character just so happens to be himself.

With this in mind its not very often that I will actively go out of my way to sit down and watch a JB film, in fact the last one was the aforementioned Tropic Thunder and that was released eight years ago, he is by the way very good in that movie though of course Robert Downey Jr steals the show. However Goosebumps did its job by enticing my two daughters aged ten and seven into wanting to watch it and so together we decided to give it a go.

So to the films plot which sees a lad by the name of Zach begrudgingly move to a small town with his mother. Things look up however when he meets the girl next door Hannah although getting to know her proves tricky as her odd father refuses to let her have anything to do with Zach. There are then a series of events that lead Zach to believe that the father has done something nasty to Hannah and so he and his new aquaintence Champ break into the house to try and prove that something is afoot. Once inside they discover shelves full of books that indicates that the father is actually none other than R.L. Stein (the world within the movie is to an extent the real world as it were). Hannah then shows up and the book 'The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena falls open which releases Bigfoot from its pages.

You see the reason why Stein is so reclusive is that he is trapped by his own imagination, having to keep his books locked up in order to keep the monsters locked away within. The kids chase after Bigfoot but end up at its mercy until Stein turns up and sucks the monster back into the book from whence he came. They all head back to the house to put the book back but discover that the novel 'Night of the Living Dummy' has been opened releasing the living dummy Slappy who is not happy at being locked away and is not keen on being put back into the book from whence he came.

Slappy then proceeds to open all of the books, releasing all of the monsters and then destroying all the books so that they cannot be put back inside. The rest of the movie sees the kids and Stein doing their best to escape a variety of creatures including werewolves and killer gnomes as Slappy and his forces hunt them down so that they can kill Stein and be forever free.

The only way to stop Slappy is for Stein to write a new story in which all of the monsters are returned to its pages but of course trying to write whilst on the run is not the easiet thing in the world. This being a movie of course (and a kids one at that) there is a happy ending which sees our heroes prevail. Though along the way it is revealed that Hannah is actually another creation of Stein and is therefore not real which means of course that when the monsters are sucked into the book so is she. Remember that happy ending I mentioned? Well you know that Hannah is going to return which she does by way of a new book written by Stein which he then destroys to make sure she remains in the real world with the rest of them, which when you think about it is just a little bit creepy.

There is of course a twist that leaves things open for a sequel but if you want to know what that is then you're just going to have to watch the film for yourself.

So what did I make of Goosebumps? Well to be honest I actually really enjoyed it. The effects were extremely well done and all of the actors played their parts brilliantly and that includes Jack Black. You can easily watch this without any former knowledge of the source material though I would imagine you will get more out of it if you do know more about the characters that appear, looking out for your favourites probably makes this a whole new viewing experience.

At the helm is Rob Letterman who only has five directing credits to his name but when those five are Los Gringos, Shark Tale, Monsters vs Aliens, Gullivers Travels (his weakest entry) and Goosebumps you would have to say that hes pretty good at his job. There is nothing slated in the immediate future from him but if there is to be a Goosebumps sequel then you wont find a safer pair of hands than his.

So what about my kids? Well I have to say that they loved it too, so much so that they are eager to see it again and want to buy the blu ray now that it has been released here in the UK.

In fact the best thing I can say about this film is that we enjoyed it so much that I am now going to track down the tv series so we can watch that together, this would surely be the desired legacy of this movie?

So in closing I have to do the usual and give this film the traditional score out of ten. Because I enjoyed Goosebumps so much and due to this being a huge surprise to me based on my expectations going into it I'm going to have to give it a very strong 8.5.

Oh and look out for a blink and you'll miss it cameo from the real R.L. Stein which I won't ruin here but is fairly obvious once you're aware of where it is.