GOOSEBUMPS 2: HAUNTED HALLOWEEN (2018)

Studio:      Columbia Pictures
Director:    Ari Sandel
Writer:      Rob Lieber, Darren Lemke
Producer:  Deborah Forte, Neal H. Moritz
Stars:     Wendy McLendon-Covey, Madison Iseman, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Caleel Harris, Chris Parnell, Ken Jeong, Bryce Cass, Peyton Wich, Jack Black

Review Score:

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Summary:

When Slappy the dummy besieges a small town by bringing Halloween decorations to life, three teens track down an unfinished R.L. Stine novel to stop him.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In the small New York town of Wardenclyffe, aspiring writer Sarah Quinn struggles with an essay on fear for her Columbia University application. Sarah’s boyfriend Tyler Mitchell sneaks in through her bedroom window, but they are caught by Sarah’s mother Kathy and younger brother Sonny.

Sonny’s best friend Sam gets dropped off to spend the weekend at the Quinns. Because she has to work a double shift at the nursing home, Kathy tasks Sarah with watching the boys for her.

Sam and Sonny respond to a call to clean out an old house for their ‘Junk Bros’ business. Inside the house, the two boys find a secret room where they recover an unfinished storybook and the ventriloquist dummy Slappy. Sonny reads an incantation written on a card in Slappy’s pocket, which brings the dummy to life.

Outside the house, Sonny and Sam are bullied by classmate Tommy Madigan and his toadies Cooper and Derek. Tommy takes the book. Tommy also tries to take Slappy, but the dummy uses his magical powers to continually pants the bully.

Sarah leaves Sonny and Sam home alone to meet Tyler at a dance club. Sarah leaves in tears when she spies Tyler kissing another girl.

Slappy comes to life while Sonny rehearses his science class presentation, which involves a replica of the town’s Tesla Tower electric building. Slappy demonstrates his magic powers by supernaturally folding Sonny’s laundry and completing Sam’s algebra homework. Slappy convinces the two boys to keep his anthropomorphism a secret.

Sarah returns home. Slappy overhears Sarah openly complaining about Tyler as well as her mother.

Sarah discovers Slappy in her backpack while at school the next day. Sarah puts Slappy in her locker and plays dumb when Tyler talks about the dance club.

Slappy confronts Tyler while he is alone decorating the auditorium. Slappy uses his magic to cause Tyler’s ladder to collapse. When Tyler is taken away in an ambulance, Sarah hears him claim that a talking puppet was responsible. Sarah becomes concerned when she finds Slappy missing from her locker. Slappy’s magic also causes Sonny’s Tesla Tower recreation to destroy the Daniel Webster Middle School science lab.

Sarah tells Sonny and Sam what happened to Tyler. The two boys confess to Sarah that Slappy came to life. The siblings realize Slappy will go after their mother next because of what Slappy heard Sarah say about Kathy.

Sonny, Sarah, and Sam rush home to find Kathy obliviously playing with Slappy. While Kathy is distracted by a call about the science lab explosion, Slappy threatens the three teens. Kathy leaves after cancelling Halloween for the trio when they try blaming everything on the dummy.

Sonny, Sam, and Sarah knock out Slappy with a baseball bat and dump him in a pond. However, Slappy manages to escape the suitcase they locked him in. Slappy tells the teens he just wants to be part of their family before disappearing.

Back at home, Sonny, Sam, and Sarah do online research that reveals similarly strange incidents involving R.L. Stine creations in Delaware. They also learn that the book Tommy stole is an unpublished R.L. Stine draft titled “Haunted Halloween,” which tells the story of a demonic dummy who sets out to create a family of his own by bringing Halloween to life.

At Fred’s Pharmacy, Slappy uses his magic to bring Goosebumps costumes and other Halloween decorations to life. Slappy also transforms store manager Walter, who harbors a mutual crush on Kathy, into a monstrous minion. The creatures head out into town and begin causing rampant chaos.

Unable to locate R.L. Stine for help, the three teens leave a message for Dr. Richard Shivers, the president of the R.L. Stine Appreciation Society. Shivers is revealed to be Stine when he hears the voicemail and begins making his way to Wardenclyffe.

Sonny, Sam, and Sarah track down Tommy in order to find the book. Tommy tells them he hid the book in his bedroom. Witches suddenly pull Tommy and the two other bullies into the sky.

Slappy and Walter infiltrate Tesla Tower and use its enormous electrical coil to amplify Slappy’s magic. More monsters come to life throughout town.

Sonny and Sam break into Tommy’s house, sneak past his grandma, and recover Stine’s novel. Gummi bears in a candy bowl grow a foot tall and feral before attacking the boys. Sonny takes a call from Kathy that prompts her to immediately drive back home. After the Stine book accidentally falls open, Sonny discovers it can magically suck Slappy’s creations into its pages. Sonny uses the book to rescue Sam from a giant gummi bear.

Sonny and Sam rescue Sarah from a skeleton by using the book. The trio thumbs through the book and learns that Slappy wants a mother. However, they find the story unfinished before it reveals Slappy’s plan or how to stop him. The three teens rush home to rescue Kathy.

While the boys battle jack-o-lanterns, Sarah finds Kathy trapped in a cocoon by a giant balloon spider. Sarah tries using the book to rescue Kathy, but a ghost flies away with it. The spider starts taking Kathy toward Tesla Tower.

Sonny, Sarah, and Sam bunker in the basement of their next-door neighbor Mr. Chu. Being a big R.L. Stine fan, Chu relishes the idea that the kids get to complete a “Goosebumps” novel by writing their own ending. Chu helps the trio craft costumes for sneaking into Tesla Tower. Sarah also mocks up an old copy of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” to look like the unpublished book.

The three teens arrive at Tesla Tower to discover that Slappy transformed Kathy into a life-size dummy. Sarah pursues Slappy to the top of the tower to prevent him from destroying the book. Sarah recovers the book from Slappy. Slappy agrees to revert Kathy to normal if Sarah returns the book. Sarah gives Slappy the fake copy and kicks Slappy into the coil as Sonny and Sam overload the tower’s electricity. An electric bolt fires Slappy into the sky. Sarah opens the real book, which sucks all of the remaining monsters in town into its pages.

R.L. Stine encounters everyone when Sonny, Sam, Sarah, Kathy, and Walter recover outside. Sarah gives the book back to Stine. Stine reveals that everyone affected by a transmutation won’t remember what happened. Stine gives Sarah writing advice before driving away.

Inspired, Sarah writes her essay on fear, which earns her acceptance into Columbia by Christmas. Sonny wins his school’s science fair competition. Kathy and Walter begin dating.

In his secluded cabin, R.L. Stine completes a new novel. Stine goes to hide the manuscript in his secret bookcase when he is unexpectedly confronted by Slappy. Slappy reveals he wrote his own book with Stine as the central character. Slappy opens his book. R.L. Stine is sucked into its pages.

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Review:

Fans of R.L. Stine’s Slappy the Dummy are in luck. It looks like someone evidently said, “pump as much Slappy as possible into the second movie since the knee-high character remains the property’s most recognizable face.” As a result, “Goosebumps 2,” which dropped its “Haunted Halloween” subtitle for its home video release (because marketing teams don’t believe anyone buys holiday-themed movies out of season), exclusively features the wisecracking wooden puppet for well over half of the runtime. Everyone else will have to hit the backside of that midpoint before other creative creeps join the manic mash-up of monsters and mayhem.

The story starts with a scene we’ve all witnessed before. A teenage boy sneaks through his girlfriend’s bedroom window, but to deliver Pringles and Red Bull while she works on her college application essay. This is a PG movie after all. “Goosebumps 2” is nothing if not responsible, finding agreeable ways to shape clichés with some charm.

Sarah struggles with writing about fear. She’s not entirely sure what the topic means to her. Sarah faces fear firsthand though, when her science nerd younger brother Sonny and his pal Sam bring home some junk from a nearby haunted house.

Sonny and Sam found a dusty book and dustier ventriloquist dummy behind a secret wall in the spooky old home. Sonny made the mistake of reciting strange words written on the back of a card in the puppet’s pocket. Now Slappy is up to his old antics again. His mischievous magic turns neighborhood Halloween decorations into chaotic creatures wreaking havoc all over the formerly sleepy little town.

It turns out the book is R.L. Stine’s long lost, unpublished first novel. It holds the key to combating Slappy’s creations. The problem is, school bully Tommy stole the tome. Worse, Stine never finished the book and has since gone into Salinger-esque seclusion. Without a proper ending, the kids aren’t sure how to stop Slappy from concocting his own conclusion to the story.

As it intends, whether viewers want this feel on a feature film or not, “Goosebumps 2” toys with a Disney Channel TV tone. Ever-present music runs alongside the plot’s sprightly pace with an airy John Williams skip in its step. Literal and figurative color pops out of every set, setup, and personality. “Goosebumps 2” more or less mixes typical teen drama with a Spielberg-style childhood adventure to achieve its vibrant vibe of harmless horror and fright-spiked fun.

The movie always means to be playful. It comes from Columbia Pictures, whose parent company is Sony, and Sarah aims to get into Columbia University while her brother’s name is Sonny. The screenwriters don’t hide their breezy take on Stine’s source material, in other words. If “Goosebumps 2” was a Universal production, Sarah would have applied to NBC Community College and her brother would have been named ComCaspian.

“Goosebumps 2” moves fast. Not so fast that its bounding back and forth between subplots doesn’t occasionally wrinkle the timeline through funky editing however. For instance, one moment shows R.L. Stine’s concerned finger pausing over his dated answering machine as he listens to a panicked voicemail from the three kids. The trio goes on to confront the bully, a few witches, anthropomorphic gummy bears, and more. Ten movie minutes later, cut to Stine racing out of his house to come to the rescue. Was he showering and getting dressed off camera during that condensed hour of activity in the meantime?

In most other circumstances, the whirling dervish tempo serves to keep constant action energetic and the kid-proofed scares spirited. The sequel’s best boon is its liveliness while its biggest knee-capper involves its proclivity to play it safe.

Average adolescent elements include familiar concerns about science fair projects and chores like folding laundry. Several sequences feature boys on bicycles, with even the bullies remembering to wear helmets of course. You’ll also see Sarah surprise her crush only to leave crestfallen when she spies him kissing another girl. The one teen trope not on the menu is a finale set at a big school dance.

Ken Jeong’s limited role could be funnier. Chris Parnell’s could too. Their comedic talents get the short shrift, but that’s on the writing, not them. Across the board, all of the performers are so personable that they become a key component of what makes “Goosebumps 2” so enjoyably pleasant.

“Pleasant” might not be an attractive adjective for hardcore hounds hankering for more bite than the rating may permit. Yet the movie maintains sincere passion for all of the chaotic content crammed onto the screen with visibly good intentions.

Whatever weight the perspective of a middle-aged man without kids may hold, “Goosebumps 2” plays the right tunes for family friendly, mildly frightful entertainment. Maybe it doesn’t take risks to further the franchise in any major manner. At worst, this sequel makes a lateral move from the first film (review here), content to be innocently appealing.

Review Score: 75

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