Mark Reviews Movies: GOOSEBUMPS 2: HAUNTED HALLOWEEN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 12, 2018

If the first Goosebumps film was a kid's introductory foray into the realm of horror movies, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween will be that same kid's first encounter with an underwhelming horror sequel. Such genre pieces almost always follow the law of diminishing returns, as the sequels keep doing the same thing over and over again with decreasingly successful results. With its first sequel, this series skips the diminishing part and jumps right into the arena of diminished.

There's nothing here that we didn't see in the first film, save for a few new monsters attacking a different town. Whereas the original took its time to establish both the world and the tone of author R.L. Stine's long-running book series (over 200 installments as of the movie's release), the sequel skips all of it—the time and the general atmosphere of kiddie-style horror mixed with some self-referential humor.

None of the filmmakers or characters from the original return. The exception is Jack Black, who again voices the mischievous ventriloquist dummy Slappy and, in a role that's little more than an extended cameo, plays the fictional version of Stine. The author shows up to save the day, only to discover that he's no longer needed. If the movie had displayed any sort of self-awareness by that point, we might have assumed it was an inside joke about the actor's participation here.

Black's performance, which might have veered a little too much into the stereotype of a haughtily successful writer, isn't missed too much here, but his absence for most of the sequel does reflect how much of the first film's spirit is missing. The original was clever, while the follow-up is simply routine. It was funny, while this one barely has time for jokes, in its rush to get through the plot. It was aware of and jabbed at the broad scope but limited nature of its source material, while the sequel is mostly aware of the general idea of its predecessor.

This time, the eventual chaos is set in a small town in New York. The story's three, teenage heroes are Sarah Quinn (Madison Iseman), a high school senior applying for college, and her younger brother Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor), who has started a junk-collecting business with his best friend Sam (Caleel Harris), who's staying with the Quinns for a week while his parents are away. Sarah and Sonny's mom Kathy (Wendi McLendon-Covey) enlists her daughter's help to keep an eye on the younger kids while she's busy at work.

While on a job cleaning up an old and abandoned house, Sonny and Sam discover a book—locked, kept in a chest, and hidden within a secret room. Opening it releases Slappy into the world. The dummy decides that the boys and Sarah are now his family. After the puppet gets into some mischief (involving telepathically pulling down a bully's pants, destroying a classroom with Sonny's science project, and almost murdering Sarah's cad of a boyfriend), the kids try to get rid of it. The angered Slappy begins bringing Halloween decorations to life and summoning an assortment of supernatural entities to be his new family.

Once the chaos starts, Rob Lieber's screenplay pretty much ignores these characters, although, to be fair, there isn't much to them before the monsters start wreaking havoc on the town. There's little fun to be had here, because we've seen it all before. One might appreciate the design of a couple of the evil things (The witches with glowing green orbs for heads are neat, and there's a scene involving malicious gummy bears that's amusing—and might be the only action sequence that possesses a self-contained arc). There's such frenzy and lack of focus to director Ari Sandel's approach, though, that most of the monsters barely make an impression.

The whole affair is rushed, with neither Lieber nor Sandel taking advantage of the various creatures, their respective personalities, or the potential for scares and/or humor that comes with them. The plot is so simple that it demands such details to maintain a sense of imagination. Instead, the movie charts a basic path (Slappy puts the town in danger, the kids figure out a way to stop the dummy, and they do), and it completely forgets to fill in the vital blanks that would make the material scary, funny, or even mildly interesting.

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween isn't necessarily bad, but it offers nothing new, while also missing the point of what made the first film fun. The movie is either assertive or lazy in its sameness, but whatever approach the filmmakers may have taken to get there, the results don't offer much hope for the inevitable third installment.

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