Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018) Review

"I need typing paper, a thesaurus, and a comfortable chair with lumbar support!"

-R. L. Stine

As Halloween approaches, best friends Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor) and Sam (Caleel Harris) are hired to clean an old house.  Inside, they find the unfinished first book written by author R. L. Stine (Jack Black).  They open the book and unleash Stine's most terrifying creation, Slappy the Dummy (Mick Wingert).  At first Slappy seems nice and willing to help the boys with their problems, but they quickly realize the dummy is up to something sinister and he starts bringing all of the town's Halloween decorations to life to help his nefarious plans.

I will be getting into spoilers for this movie, so beware reading beyond this paragraph.  Goosebumps 2 is an okay movie, but don't go to the theater for it.  Wait for it to come out on Netflix or something.  It's not that good.

What Works:

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween has a lot of really great ideas, it just doesn't blend them together very well, but the individual parts of this movie were pretty enjoyable.  Interestingly, the first chunk of these movie seems to be going in a completely different direction than what I expected.  Slappy's goal is different and he just wants to be a part of Sonny's family.  It's actually pretty creepy stuff and gives us a couple of fun sequences of Slappy helping out Sonny and threatening Tyler (Bryce Cass), the cheating boyfriend of Sonny's sister, Sarah (Madison Iseman).  If the filmmakers had continued with this story of Slappy focusing on one family, I would have really enjoyed it.  The premise was unexpected and fun for a kids movie.

The second chunk of the movie involves Slappy bringing all of the Halloween decorations to life.  It's a bit of a rehash of the first film, but still gives us some fun character designs.  Most of the creatures don't play much of a role in the overall film, which is a shame.  If they had mad the whole film about killer Halloween decorations we could have had a really great movie.

The most exciting idea of the movie occurs when Slappy puts an ogre mask on Walter (Chris Parnell) transforming him into an ogre minion.  This was a great development and I though Slappy would start putting more masks onto people to transform them and make them his minions, but he doesn't ever do that again.  That could have been a lot of fun and it's a shame the movie doesn't do more with that concept.

I really liked Wendy McLendon-Covey as Sonny's mother.  She doesn't get a ton to do, but is really funny in a few of her scenes, especially in the first scene where she calls out the boyfriend-sneaking-through-the-bedroom-window movie trope.

Jack Black returns as R. L. Stine, but for only a handful of scenes.  Regardless, he is still really fun in the role and is perfectly cast.  We also get Ken Jeong in a small role and he isn't over the top like he is in a lot of roles.  He's just a Halloween and Goosebumps enthusiast that gets a few funny lines.

Finally, I really liked the final scene of the movie.  It's total sequel-bait, but I am on board with a 3rd movie where R. L. Stine is trapped inside a book written by Slappy.  I think that could be a lot of fun and would love to see it happen.


What Sucks:

As you can tell from above, Goosebumps 2 had a lot of great ideas, but didn't go far enough with any of them.  But another problem is the ideas didn't mix together well.  It feels like they made two different movies and stitched them together.

The younger characters aren't very interesting.  The actors do fine with the material, but none of their characters are compelling in the slightest.

The strangest problem this movie has is with its villain, Slappy.  His motivation is wildly different from the dummy in the first movie and it's pretty jarring.  I guess since it's an unfinished book, this version of Slappy could want different things than the version we saw in the last movie, but it's weird.  The filmmakers could have done a better job here with either explaining Slappy's change in motivation or by making the villain a different character entirely.  There are plenty of Goosebumps books to choose from, we didn't need to have Slappy come back.


Verdict:

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween has a lot of really fun ideas that are entertaining, but don't get played out enough.  There are some funny characters, fun moments, and an excellent final scene, but the younger characters are uninteresting, the ideas aren't mixed together well, and Slappy's sudden change in motivation is distracting.  It's a decent kids Halloween movie, but I wouldn't rush to see it by any means.

 6/10: Okay