Goosebumps(2015)

A teenager teams up with the daughter of young adult horror author R. L. Stine after the writer's imaginary demons are set free on the town of Madison, Delaware.

Director:

 Rob Letterman

Writers:

 Darren Lemke (screenplay), Scott Alexander(story), 2 more credits »

Stars:

 Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush

Storyline

Upset about moving from a big city to a small town, teenager Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) finds a silver lining when he meets the beautiful girl, Hannah (Odeya Rush), living right next door. But every silver lining has a cloud, and Zach's comes when he learns that Hannah has a mysterious dad who is revealed to be R. L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of the bestselling Goosebumps series. It turns out that there is a reason why Stine is so strange... he is a prisoner of his own imagination - the monsters that his books made famous are real, and Stine protects his readers by keeping them locked up in their books. When Zach unintentionally unleashes the monsters from their manuscripts and they begin to terrorize the town, it's suddenly up to Stine, Zach, Hannah, and Zach's friend Champ (Ryan Lee) to get all of them back in the books where they belong.

User Reviews

I've never really been quiet when it comes to the lack of live-action family films these days. Growing up in the '90s there were a plethora of them. Over the past decade or so there has been a steep decline in this sub genre with studios opting to make animated films instead. It's somewhat understandable since they're more reliable when it comes to making a profit, as seen by the success that Pixar and Dreamworks have had. But there's just something to be said about watching actual people on screen deal with their problems. Especially as children, it kindles our imaginations because if we see it happening to them, it could happen to us too, right? And when done correctly they can really be memorable.

While this film is only partially animated, it takes place in the real world with live-action humans. In Goosebumps, the motion picture based on R.L. Stine's enormously successful children's book series of the same name, Zach (Dylan Minnette) and his mother move to the suburban town of Madison, Delaware. Zach gripes a lot about there being nothing to do in his new city until the mysterious homeschooled neighbor girl (Odeya Rush) befriends him and he develops an interest in her. One night he's led to believe that she may be imprisoned by her own father, a fictionalized version of R.L. Stine himself (Jack Black), and sneaks into her house. He discovers a bookshelf full of Goosebumps manuscripts which he decides to explore. Opening the first story releases a 10-foot tall abominable snowman who starts wreaking havoc throughout the town. Eventually, one by one, each story gets opened up with the books' respective monsters coming to life trying to kill their creator, Stine.

Some may consider it a bad thing, but this movie does a great job of not holding back any scares. Adults shouldn't have too hard of a time--although certain monsters may tap into your own personal phobias--but it will definitely haunt many children. But that's what makes Goosebumps so appealing. It keeps the visuals acceptable, but never tones itself down. When I was little we had the anthology television show Are You Afraid of the Dark? which still creeps me out as an adult. Goosebumps is frightening, but it's a harmless scare. It provides us with the same macabre tone of the novels--probably much to the dismay of some of the parents.