Goosebumps (2015)
Familiar isn’t always bad. Sometimes familiar is just the thing you’re looking for, with it’s warmth and deep similarity to all those things you kind of think maybe you used to like.
Goosebumps is familiar in a hollow, empty way; like celebrating Christmas alone in an empty house. Sure, the tree is there, the fire is there and there’s even some snow outside — but it all lacks the authenticity that let you love it in the first place.
Truly, Goosebumps has everything you would expect to find in a teen-family-adventure. Hannah is a cool girl, Zach is new in town and totally over just about everything except for being sarcastic and this new cool girl he met. Did I mention how cool she is? She wears converse and jeans and she’s just not like the other girls. Totally cool. And then there’s Champ, who, in a better movie would provide comic relief, I guess. Because a movie starring Jack-fricking-Black needs another character to provide laughs. Right.
Black is a funny man and after watching Goosebumps it’s probably fair to assume his character (R.L. Stine, naturally) is only humorous because of the lines he made up and his own comedic talent. He plays the kids-Stephen-King part well, alternating between spooky and serious while softening up a bit as the movie trods along.
There are some fun set pieces and the creatures are great in the film because they’re great in the books. There’s nothing good here that wasn’t created by R.L. Stine or the man who plays him in the film. Stine is everything, whether it be through Black or through the creatures he’s created. In the hands of better filmmakers, Goosebumps would be more like Paranorman; a film that turns traditions and tropes on their heads.
Instead, Goosebumps is just fine serving as a mediocre vehicle to a mediocre movie that embraces every awful stereotype you’ve seen in films like it before. Stine delivers a line about writing near the end of the movie, “there are three parts to every story. The beginning, the middle and the twist.”
The twist in Goosebumps is that the movie you thought, or perhaps just hoped, you were seeing never existed at all. Gotcha.
