GOOSEBUMPS 2: HAUNTED HALLOWEEN: A Fun Distraction That Doesn’t Quite Come Together

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween is a sequel to the 2015 offering, and although this one has a mostly different cast, it’s along the same lines as the previous one. This time, three kids who live in Wardenclyffe, New York, a small town in which Nicola Tesla built a tower that was a wireless transmission station, which one of said kids, Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor), happens to be fascinated by. The other one, Sam (Caleel Harris), is much less nerdy, and is trying to get a garbage disposal business off the ground, which leads them to the former of house of R.L. Stine (Jack Black), and an unfinished manuscript which he’d hidden away in the house at the beginning of his career.

Unfortunately (and, it has to be said, inexplicably), there’s a small fortune-cookie sized piece of paper next to the book with an occult phrase on it that brings to life an evil ventriloquist’s dummy which fans of the books will recognise as Slappy, a fast-talking supernatural living doll that terrorises anybody who brings it to life. For those who haven’t read any of the books, Slappy is essentially Chuckie but for children.

So, Slappy comes to life, and this time he’s after something other than vengeance. Having been devoid of a family for his presumably long life, he decides he wants one; as a result of that, he gets the bullies off the childrens’ backs, but things take a dark turn when their older sister Sarah (Madison Iseman) is cheated on by her boyfriend, and he ends up in the hospital. Unfortunately, Slappy uses Tesla’s tower to send out a signal which brings all of the halloween decorations in the town to life, and madness ensues.

A Solid Effort

To Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween’s credit, it does have an unusually ambitious story for a children’s film. Most film-makers would be satisfied with making a sub-par film and releasing it under the Goosebumps moniker, simply because they know that it would be a good financial investment. But the film franchise does have an interesting meta-narrative in which Stine is one of the protagonists of his own stories. It never gets too ambitious, but that does mean they knew who their audience was, and that having a House of Leaves level of complexity in the narrative would just leave them dumbfounded.

The film does have a sense of humour, too. Very often, Slappy has cheeky one-liners, like ‘I love a good holiday sale’ as he walks into a discount halloween store. Some of the horror sections are well-suited to this kind of film too, inasmuch as they aren’t really horror, but scenes of redemption, in which the kids are allowed to save the day.

Raising the Stakes

That doesn’t mean the narrative is completely devoid of threat. There are some moments where the kids face their own mortality, even if they’re hinted at in a child-friendly way (talking pumpkins, giant Gummy Bears, that kind of thing), and there are other, more existential scares too – losing your mother and having your reputation damaged in front of your classmates are very real concerns for the film’s target audience, and there’s nothing wrong with any of that.

Unfortunately, there are some problems with the film. Logically, the film’s narrative never really comes together. For instance, why would Stine have an incantation next to a novel in his own story? And why would Slappy need to transform the entire town into ghouls just to have a family?

Goosebumps 2: Conclusion

That is, ultimately, the film’s downfall. In some respects, the filmmakers do treat their target audience as people who are able to understand nuanced concepts if they’re presented in the right way, and Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween does have a fair amount of bite for a PG-rated horror film, but the plot mechanics never quite come together, and it is also fairly predictable.

In terms of family films, you could do a lot worse this October than Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween. I do think parents will be pretty bored by it, but if you have children who are itching for a cinema trip during the spooky season, there have been much worse offerings in the past—just don’t expect it to have any staying power.

Have you seen Goosebumps 2? What are your thoughts? And did your children love it? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween was released in the US on October 12, 2018 and the United Kingdom on October 19, 2018. For all international release dates see here.