Last Friday, I had the pleasure of sitting down and watching the new "Goosebumps" movie. I honestly was not expecting to see a cinematic tour de force. After watching the trailer, in which there was a goofy looking kid with buffed teeth, I marked him as the classic lackey. Moreover, I knew that he was embedded in the story for comic relief. Next, after I saw a dark haired and curious looking girl and a handsome guy, I immediately marked them as the "movie couple." In addition, I was expecting the monsters to be doofy looking CGI creations, after seeing the abominable snowman clumsily picking up an object.
Well, my ego's resistance to the movie's plotline was obliterated within minutes of watching it in a cavernous theater that made me feel as if I was watching the movie in the woods. Nostalgia kicked in and the feeling of dread that was created in the books was recreated as soon as the monsters were released from the books. I interacted with the movie as I cringed when the protagonist sneaked into his mysterious next-door neighbor’s house. When Jack Black, who plays R.L. Stine in the movie, did not crack a smile as he shut his windows to warn the protagonist to stay away from his daughter, I knew that she had a character flaw, and the film's slow buildup did not reveal it.
A scene in the beginning of the movie that particularly stuck out to me was the scene in which the protagonist learns a valuable lesson. He sneaks into his neighbor, Hannah's, house, after he thinks that her father was screaming at her in a threatening manner. When the doofy looking cops from the Delaware town arrive, Jack Black innocently turns on his television to reveal that the screaming sound originated from his television. The cops then retreat in disgust and the protagonist’s mother reprimands him. This scene reaffirms the idea that adults are oblivious to the nitty gritty.
I seriously disliked the protagonist during the scene in which he sneaks into his neighbor’s house again after his near arrest. I was tempted to slap someone because I could not believe that he was sneaking into her basement to find out what was going on. I was so annoyed that I did not laugh at his doofy looking sidekick’s joke, about how he came on the adventure to look for girls . In addition, he seemed to almost prove that curiosity killed the cat when he presumptuously unlocked a book that was in R.L. Stine's bookcase. Talk about an uncalled for invasion of privacy! I was equally surprised when his neighbor Hannah popped out with a baseball bat. She proved that she was not simply a victim of R.L. Stine's reproach. She was somewhat loving because she was protective of her home and her father's books. Altogether, I found the protagonist unlikeable because he violated the social norm which states that you do not break into people’s houses and open their books without their permission.
In particular, the monster, Slappy, that I guess was released from his book off-screen, creeped me out the most. He bought back bad childhood memories of the ventriloquist dummy that plagued the pages of Goosebumps. He said sneering, derisive comments. He appeared out of thin air and released a shrill, deranged laugh. During the movie, Slappy proved even more menacing, as he released all of the other monsters in the books. After he did this, he also lit matches and burned the books so that there would be no possibility that the monsters could be rebounded within the pages of their stories.Slappy was especially nefarious in the scene where R.L. Stine had to rewrite a story that included all of the characters from his books, so that the monsters could return to the books they came from . Slappy closed the typewriter while R.L. Stine's fingers were furiously tapping the keys to write his holistic story. How menacing, how invading! Slappy's maniacal laugh still echoes in my ear today!
The movie's plot seemed to take a depressing, existential turn after R.L. Stine's plan to blow up the roaming monsters failed; they simply reassembled themselves. I guess the monsters were able to reform because they are physically dead only in the books. Moreover, the fact that they were able to reassemble themselves suggests that they were formed by devil craft. I could not help wondering whether or not Stine created them from dark magic-- how could they be undefeatable otherwise? Furthermore, I wondered how isolated Stine was when he was a child. After all, Stine mentioned that he was bullied as a child and he created the monsters to get back at his unkind peers. I concluded that this part of the movie did not need an explanation because it was simply a plot hole. Furthermore, I wondered If my points of inquiry mattered in the long run. Regardless, the monsters seemed to be uncontrollable either way.
The movie's penultimate scene in the town's forest, where Stine presents his new book with his rewritten characters, is noticeably poignant. In this scene, in which all of the Goosebumps monsters are drawn into the new, propped open book, Stine's daughter ,Hannah, who doubles as the protagonist's friend,is revealed to be a ghost. As she is whisked into the new book, she becomes white and translucent. I felt the protagonist's pain because one of his only true friends turned out to be a fictional character. Although she did not have any noticeable defects, she was one of R.L. Stine's monster creations. Although,the movie hinted that her human life was precarious because she is translucent in moonlight, I didn't expect that Hannah was going to go like that.
Well, it turns out she didn’t. After Stine somehow was imbedded in the protagonist's school as a teacher and a love interest to the protagonist's eccentric aunt (rather cheesy in my opinion), his neighbor appeared in the hallway and gave the protagonist a kiss on the cheek. It turns out that Stine wrote another book with her in it--another book that he opened and, I think, will discard forever, because he obviously has love for her. Stine does have a heart and is not a spooky shut in after all! Even though the relationship between the main character and his neighbor developed quickly and apparently not on screen, it was adorable.
This movie plays with the notion that fiction can become reality and bolsters the transformative power of the genre. The alien monsters wreak havoc on the small Delaware town as they freeze the incompetent cops. Slappy acts as an arsonist as he burned the books. The abominable snowman broke into a vending machine and ate candy. The protagonist’s school was on lockdown because the monsters infiltrated his high school. Danger seemed to be around every corner in this movie. There were even murderous nombs who were self-sustaining and chased the main characters out of Stine's house because they bared knives and tied up one of the characters to put him in an oven! This movie was so live and violent that I questioned whether it was appropriate for children. The part where R.L. Stine was swept up in gelatinous pink goo that almost carried him back into his rewritten book was especially gripping. Altogether, the danger factor of these monsters was very pronounced in the movie and made it all the more scary to imagine that these events could occur in real time.
I do not think that this was a "corny, kiddy movie" at all. It was very gripping and suspenseful. I cannot wait to watch this movie again. I need to find my copy of the book, "Slappy's Revenge" to reread. I never imagined that Slappy would be a central character in this movie. He was a small dummy who was a quarter of the size of the abominable snowman, but he pulled all the ropes.
