Review of Goosebumps (2015) by Jordan K — 28 May 2016

Goosebumps has surprisingly good reviews, but is very lifeless even from the getgo. It's cheesy, predictable, unfunny, and lacks fun for a film that cries out for a ton of it. There's most importantly a blatant lack of material to use.

Horror author RL Stine, his daughter, and her neighbor run into trouble when opening up Goosebumps manuscripts in which monsters come to life when the pages open. Stine and the gang go to solve the mess made around town caused by a mischievious living dummy named Slappy.

I read Goosebumps every now and then as a kid and, honestly, there's a lot of material to use. Look at the TV series, too, they could bring the books to life in a whole new fascinating perspective. The story for Goosebumps' film adaptation is so overdone and tired that it actually lacks material to work with. It brings some of its familiar monsters and ghouls in the story only to disappear completely seconds later - the film is too absorbed into RL Stine to focus on the charm of Goosebumps, its fear provoking villains. As for Stine, the performances in Goosebumps are mediocre. Not terrible, but Jack Black didn't seem right for the role of Stine (and Slappy, who he uses the same voice for). The character of Stine is conflicted between being mysterious and dark and being the humorous aspect of the film. Black is almost always a comedic actor who has his hits and misses in certain roles and this one was a major miss. The rest of Goosebumps is just predictable kiddy nonsense - it's not terrible but it's lifeless in its "monsters take over the town, we gotta stop them" approach. It's been done to death before and Goosebumps doesn't make it special or any more entertaining. Goosebumps is a forgettable skip - stick with the 90s TV show...