Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (Review)
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween is Spooktacular in the Best and Worst Ways.
Growing up as a kid, I used to read the Goosebumps books like there was no tomorrow. I even watched that terrible Canadian television series that was based on them. So, when I saw that I was going to be watching Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween this fall, my expectations were more than a little low. Sure, I’d seen the last film and was pleasantly surprised by it, but this is a sequel and we all know that sequels are never as good as the original except for a few rare cases. The real question is if Haunted Halloween is one of those cases.
One major difference between the first Goosebumps film and Haunted Halloween is that there is noticeably less Jack Black this time around. Then again, that’s probably because he was wrapped up with filming The House with a Clock in Its Walls. However, this time around there are a lot more recognizable faces including the likes of Chris Parnel (30 Rock), Ken Jeong (Crazy Rich Asians), and, to a lesser extent, Jeremy Ray Taylor (It). Of course, Black does get a few minutes on screen, but it wouldn’t be much of a sequel without an appearance from the man playing the legendary author R.L. Stine.
Haunted Halloween is not based off any of the Goosebumps books you might have read as a kid. It’s based on an entirely new tale but embraces a lot of the concepts and themes we all loved as kids from the series. The most noticeable of which would be the evil ventriloquist dummy who is bringing all sorts of Halloween horrors to life. Needless to say, Haunted Halloween is filled with classic scary monsters come to life to terrorize the town. Not to worry though, because while there might be a few unsettling parts none of Haunted Halloween is too scary for kids, which makes it a perfect holiday movie for kids.
I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable Haunted Halloween actually was. I imagined it being completely geared towards the younger members of the audience, but a lot of the humor in it was just good-natured and enjoyable. The jokes are raunchy or trying too hard to wink at the grown-ups in the audience, but instead, remind me of what I loved most about the Goosebumps books as a kid. Of course, that meant that Haunted Halloween has the most sophisticated story of the year, but who really cares? This is just supposed to be pure nostalgia for the grown-ups and pure entertainment for the kids. In that regards, I say that this is an incredible success.
I won’t say that Haunted Halloween is nearly as good as it’s predecessor. In fact, there are a lot of moments in which it does feel a lot like a made for tv movie. Overall the visual effects in the film are pretty adequate, but there are certain moments where it definitely looks flat out bad. Unfortunately, most of them are featuring the dummy I mentioned earlier, who is in an awful lot of this film. Of course, this will certainly help ensure your kids don’t have nightmares about puppets coming to life. Still, even the practical effects look like they would be barely passable in a theme park.
When I say that I enjoyed Haunted Halloween, let me be clear that it’s only out of pure nostalgia for Goosebumps. The tale itself doesn’t quite stack up to the ones I remember so fondly as a kid, even if they manage to tap on a lot of the same themes. The ones from my childhood were engrossing to the point where I could never put the books down, even well after my bedtime. While this film certainly has actors capable of helping the story limp along, it doesn’t suck me in, because it tries to do too much. Instead of just one monster or tale, it unleashes all of them. There are werewolves, witches, ghosts, mummies, and on and on. It’s a little too much where it feels uncommitted to a specific element and feels spread too thin. In other words, it’s a bit of a disaster of a movie on a technical level. That still doesn’t mean I didn’t let nostalgia take the wheel while I was watching.
Haunted Halloween is a safe family movie to take the kids too. It’s not going to give them any nightmares or make you feel like you’re trapped in one while you’re watching it. Of course, if you don’t have little ones of your own to initially justify you seeing Haunted Halloween, don’t look at me to help out in that area. I might have found myself enjoying the movie strictly out of pure childhood nostalgia, but I honestly don’t think it’s worth seeing if you don’t have a reason to see it. I’d suggest dusting off an old copy your favorite Goosebumps books and take a trip down memory lane the old fashioned way instead.
