Rob Letterman
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The film makes passing nods to horror classics like Gremlins and The Shining, but those homages are half-baked.
"Goosebumps" gets a little noisy and chaotic at times, much like its spiritual ancestor, Joe Dante's 1984 classic "Gremlins."
Only one of these set pieces has any teeth, an extended kitchen attack from those gnomes that in its trapped-floor climax one-ups Gremlins, its obvious inspiration, all without edging out of a PG rating.
The vibe is old-school Steven Spielberg, as if "Goosebumps" had followed "Goonies" and "Gremlins" as an adventure intended for both kids (who will dig the pratfalling wolfman) and adults (who will appreciate the Stine character's vinegary wit).
Specifically it wants to be Joe Dante’s “Gremlins,” only stocked with a couple dozen types of beasties, shaken from about half of Stine’s original 1990s run.
The Goosebumps screenplay by Darren Lemke (Shrek Forever After, Jack the Giant Slayer) – with Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, Agent Cody Banks) credited for the screen story – borrows story and character elements from many a previous film, especially 1990s kid adventure movies like Hocus Pocus and Jumanji.
Rather than adapting any of Stine's individual stories, the filmmakers opt for a greatest hits approach, ensuring appearances from a host of fan favourites in a plot that recalls 1995's similarly effects-led children's adventure Jumanji .
For everyone else, though, "Goosebumps" promises to be something of a slog, benefitting from a fun tone reminiscent of "Jumanji" -- particularly early on -- but one that quickly devolves into a frantic but lazily plotted chase movie.
Similar to Chris Van Allsburg’s Jumanji, the ghoulish creations step into our cynical world (via palpable FX), leaving the town of Madison in the hands of three bewildered teens and one snotty writer, who are all tasked to trap them back into fiction.
Besides, this is like the greatest cinematic offspring Jumanji and Gremlins ever begat.
The film makes passing nods to horror classics like Gremlins and The Shining, but those homages are half-baked.
The script is funny and sharp, and filled with references that most older horror fans will appreciate, from "Teen Wolf" to "The Shining," but the film errs more on the side of slapstick than scary.
The scene in which Stine, Zach, Hannah, and Champ try to elude a gym-shorts-sporting werewolf in a supermarket evokes both “ The Shining ” and “ Zombieland ," while being milder than either.
Unluckily, her father is there, poking his angry face between the fence’s slats like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.”
Later, when the weird neighbor, who turns out to be the (movie version) writer R.L. Stine, is looking for a safe spot to write, he runs into the school production of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.”
It’s appropriate, then, that Rob Letterman’s film pumps with the blood of King’s The Shining, fictionalizing Stine (Black) and turning his creations against him – the id of the writer versus the ego.
The Goosebumps screenplay by Darren Lemke (Shrek Forever After, Jack the Giant Slayer) – with Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, Agent Cody Banks) credited for the screen story – borrows story and character elements from many a previous film, especially 1990s kid adventure movies like Hocus Pocus and Jumanji.
Though this isn’t the first attempt at bringing the YA horror series to the big screen (Tim Burton was attached to produce a film version in 1998 that never came to fruition), it’s a harmless slice of family entertainment that evokes the goofy humor and PG-rated scares of other Halloween classics like “Hocus Pocus.”
"Gremlins," 1993's " Hocus Pocus ," and 1995's "Jumanji"?are…
If anything, Goosebumps will serve as an ideal followup for Hocus Pocus, or Ernest Scared Stupid, or Monster Squad in future Halloween marathons.
However, I’d say it’s more like Hocus Pocus, or a horror story told by the Pitch Perfect Bellas while they sit around the campfire.
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
Directed by Eli Roth
influenced by Goosebumps (2015)
Plot Themes
As if director Eli Roth hoped borrowing concepts from the likes of the Harry Potter films, Lemony Snicket , and Goosebumps would suffice, as opposed to creating something mildly original instead, House… at once fails as a scary tale for the young audience he’s clearly aiming for and as an enjoyable romp for the adults who will go along rather begrudgingly.
Which, combined with the rotund presence of Jack Black and the fact it’s based on a kids’ novel (by John Bellairs), suggests The House With A Clock In Its Walls might be little more than a Goosebumps doppelgänger.
Based on the novel by John Bellairs, this comic horror fantasy will initially remind viewers of another Jack Black family scarefest, Goosebumps , as it skilfully mixes humour and slick CGI with thrills as Lewis uncovers the secrets of both his uncle and his new home.
The recent Goosebumps revival is as close to this in spirit as anything in recent memory and, as with that film, it’s a reminder that Black is really great at a lot of things, including this.
It puts recent efforts like 2015’s Goosebumps (which incidentally also starred Jack Black, the erstwhile headliner here) to shame while at the same time reminding me of past favorites like Gremlins , Adventures in Babysitting , The Witches and even that first adventure of everyone’s favorite boy wizard Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone .
"House" has decent scares for a kid's flick, and an adventurous spirit reminiscent of "Monster House" or a chapter in the "Goosebumps" franchise.
When Zach has a "Rear Window" moment and suspects Hannah is in danger, he and new pal Champ (Ryan Lee) sneak into the Shivers' cellar to investigate.
Cue the “Rear Window” intrigue.
Hannah inexplicably disappears after a loud argument with her dad, Zach peeping at their quarrel from his bedroom in classic “Rear Window” style.
That’s especially hard to do when — in a “Rear Window” homage — Zach spies a father-daughter argument and Hannah disappears.
Obviously enough, the film incorporates plot elements and characters from Stine’s prose, but with the rare purpose of building them up into a complex braid of creatively used cinematic references, ranging from Fifties monster movies to the likes of Night Of The Living Dead.
While it certainly means its self-conscious jokes to be in good fun, Stine’s unimaginative repurposing of iconic monsters proves to be an undercurrent running throughout the adaptation, to the point that director Letterman and screenwriter Darren Lemke – in their numerous wink-wink allusions to “Magic,” “The Shining,” “Christine,” “Night of the Living Dead,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and other classics – seem engaged in an unflattering autocritique of their own source material as fundamentally derivative.
The pop culture references fly fast and furious, with Gulliver feeding Horatio lines from Prince's "Kiss" in a Romeo and Juliet inspired romance scene, a replica of Times Square erected in Gulliver's honor, and the bad guys cook up a giant robot that's supposed to be their answer to Gulliver's might as a warrior, but really just recreates the dull metal-on-metal fight scenes from Iron Man 2 (that one might not have been intentional).
The meta-narrative is perhaps the cleverest approach one can bring to an adaptation like this, and Goosebumps takes a lot of cues from the meta-horror cult fave The Cabin in the Woods (as well as the 1991 John Candy comedy Delirious).
I certainly wouldn’t have minded seeing a feature-length adaptation of one of the classics, but what I think would have worked best for a film like this would have been to give it the anthology treatment, similar to how the “Twilight Zone,” “Creepshow,” and “Tales from the Crypt” (the 1972 film, not the more recent ones) films did.
A riff on R.L. Stine’s enormously popular series of children’s horror stories, at its best it’s a kids’ movie like Joe Dante’s Explorers or some of the better Pixar entries.
At one point, the town’s inept police force of two discuss the 1958 Steve McQueen movie, “The Blob.”
The monsters in his books are all creations born of their creator having been bullied and alienated as a child — sort of like Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979) for the bubblegum set.
The script is funny and sharp, and filled with references that most older horror fans will appreciate, from "Teen Wolf" to "The Shining," but the film errs more on the side of slapstick than scary.
Production designer Gavin Bocquet ("Kafka" and early "Star Wars" ) deserves a shout-out for making the big and the small so compatible and yet so distinct.
Lemuel Gulliver is a comic book-reading, Star Wars-loving nerd who works in the mailroom of a large newspaper.
Since she’s only in the film at its far ends, and is, of course, secretly in love with the Star Wars–fixated dweeb, is there any reason this part couldn’t have been played by, say, Janeane Garofalo?
Emboldened by his newly acquired size, Gulliver now exaggerates his past, drawing on film culture to cast himself as the victorious hero of stories ranging from Star Wars to Titanic.
A world of Guitar Hero and "Star Wars" DVDs?
He helps Horatio woo the princess (Blunt) away from her pompous fiance (Chris O'Dowd), and then regales the Lilliputians with tales of his world, in which he was "President Awesome" and starred in both Star Wars and Titanic.
"Go! Go! Go! Go!" and endless utterances of "Seriously") plus visual crutches, including an amusement park with a Ferris wheel homage to Steven Spielberg's critical flop "1941."
And Lee, late of TV's "Trophy Wife," is a bona fide scene stealer on the level of Stephen Geoffreys' Evil Ed from "Fright Night."
Apparently not understanding the "or else" part, Zach and his new nerdy buddy Champ (Ryan Lee, channeling Duckie from "Pretty in Pink") break into Hannah's house after fearing something bad has happened to her.
Much like the character of "Peter Falk" (played by Peter Falk) in Wings of Desire and the character of "John Malkovich" (played by Malkovich) in Being John Malkovich, this "R.L. Stine" is a fictionalized version of the writer, here presented (through Black's amusing portrayal) as a persnickety sort who reveals to a couple of neighborhood kids (Dylan Minnette and Ryan Lee) that the monsters he created in his bestsellers are actually alive and kept safely locked away in the original manuscripts of the books.
Its central concept stems from In the Mouth of Madness, with a self-referential wrinkle.