'Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween' review

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween is the most forgettable film I've seen in 2018. In fact, it's so completely forgettable that it might just inadvertently be memorable. It's an amusing paradox, but it doesn't mean you should venture out to see Ari Sandel's sequel to Sony's 2015 franchise-starter. I never saw the first film, but I checked this one out because I had an extra ticket (thanks, Sinemia!) and a few hours to kill before Bad Times at the El Royale. What I found was a movie that seemed to be designed for the explicit purpose of killing time. And with so much worth your time these days, a TV movie that escaped the studio lot and accidentally found its way to theaters should not be on the top of the list.

Seriously, this feels like the kind of Halloween special I would have watched on Cartoon Network when I was 10 years old. Not really a compliment in this instance.

Haunted Halloween is an adaptation of another chapter in R.L. Stine's hugely popular Goosebumps series, this time focusing on the exploits of an evil dummy named Slappy (voiced by Mick Wingert) who wants to bring Halloween to life and create his own family. Of course, he'll be thwarted by a trio of human heroes- Sarah (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle's Madison Iseman), Sonny (It's Jeremy Ray Taylor), and Sam (Caleel Harris). The latter two are entrepreneurial best friends, responsible for finding the dummy during one of their jobs and enlisting his help with science projects and other tasks. Meanwhile, Sarah (Sonny's sister) is struggling with her college essay for Columbia, as she desperately wants to escape her small town life in Wardenclyffe. 

By the time Sonny and Sam realize what they've done, it's already a bit too late. Slappy begins to raise an army, wreaking havoc on their town and kidnapping Sonny and Sarah's mother (Wendi McLendon-Covey). Eventually, the trio will realize there's only one man who can help- Mr. R.L. Stine (Jack Black) himself. 

Of course, the whole film plays out exactly like you'd expect. It's 90 minutes long, and it wastes no time setting up every tiny narrative predicament that will be shortly resolved. In the opening scene, we see Sarah struggling to find the words for her Columbia essay about fear (*cough cough*). If you've ever seen a movie before, you know this thing is gonna end with Sarah putting the finishing touches on that essay. And that's okay! Movies aimed at the elementary school set are meant to be predictable. I genuinely did not expect Haunted Halloween to reinvent the wheel in any significant capacity. I anticipated formula, and that's precisely what I got.

But even as an almost blatantly formulaic example of mildly spooky thrills, this sequel misses the boat on striking characters, strong laughs, and everything in between. The only real humor comes from Jack Black's brief cameo as Stine, who injects a kind of meta, self-referential spirit into the film that was sorely missing before. Other than those brief moments of madcap zaniness, the rest is just plain dull. Sonny and Sam barely have any defining features, and their relationship with Sarah is thin to say the least. Once again, I'm not expecting complex human beings from a Goosebumps movie, but the broad lack of depth is disappointing.

Finally, why must every kids movie these days spend half of its runtime just throwing everything at the screen? After Slappy brings the creatures of Halloween to life, Goosebumps 2 becomes a maddening roller-coaster of lightning-fast pacing and cluttered visuals. It's so desperate to entertain that it basically disposes of its story in favor of nonstop insanity. I get that kids have short attention 

spans, but we have to expect better than this. 

Still, it's hard to get too upset at a movie that so willfully embraces its own generic emptiness. It's a flat ride of one-dimensional characters and minimal thrills, but at least it has the good sense to be over in 90 minutes. Sometimes that's all you can ask for. 

THE FINAL GRADE:  C                                              (5.2/10)

Images courtesy of Sony