With Goosebumps, all of R. L. Stine's creatures come to life on the screen

Goosebumps: “PG-13“ (1 h. 48 min.)

Starring: Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush, Ryan Lee, Amy Ryan

Directed by: Rob Letterman

Based on the popular children’s books by R.L. Stine, this film works under the premise that Steine (Black) really did create all of those horrible creatures and that they all actually do exist in the real world. Steine has them all locked away in the original manuscripts, but once they inadvertently get released he now has to figure out a way to put them back onto the printed pages.

The film starts with teenager Zach Cooper (Minnette) who is upset that he and his mom, Gale (Amy Ryan), have moved from a big city to a small town where she has taken over the job of high school principal. However, Zach finds something of a silver lining when he discovers that there is a beautiful girl, Hannah (Rush), living right next door. As we all know, however, every silver lining has something of a dark cloud hidden inside of it. Hence it is no surprise that Zach’s comes with one as well. He soon discovers that Hannah’s rather odd dad is revealed to be R. L. Stine

As stated, Stine is so strange...he is apparently prisoner of his own imagination — because the monsters that his books made famous are very real, and Stine has taken to protecting his readers by keeping the creatures locked up in the original manuscripts. When Zach —accompanied by a school chum Champ (Lee) — unintentionally unleash the monsters from their manuscripts they begin to terrorize the town. Now Zach, Hannah, Champ, and Stine must figure out a way to get them all back in the books where they belong.

This has them rushing across town so as to retrieve Stine’s original typewriter (which is housed in a display at the school) so that he can type up a new story so as to contain all of the monsters and trap them back into a manuscript. Meanwhile, one of the more particular odious creatures, a living dummy named Slappy (Avery L Jones) has unleashed all of the monsters and sent them to the high school to terrorize the students, who are all there for a dance. to stop the monsters from attacking the high School.

As a parent who read quite a few of these Goosebumps books to our kids, we found the movie not only enjoyable, but thoroughly entertaining as we watched the “monsters” come to life in the kid-friendly “frightening” fashion that replicated the fear-mongering of the books themselves. Unlike grown-up horror movies, these aren’t designed so much to terrify or disturb us, but to get us to gasp at the “gotcha” moments and jump back in our seats, gasping at the creature moments that occur throughout the film.

Needless to say, if you either grew up reading these books, or your kids grew up with you reading them to your kids, then all of you should get a real kick out of watching them come to life on the screen.