Finally out of its development hell, the film based on R.L. Stine’s children’s horror novel series, Goosebumps, has finally begun production. Although we had the great TV show on Saturday mornings years back (is it still on Netflix Instant?), part of me misses the slightly tame freak out stories of my youth even if I’m now a cynical old man. It seems that the new film is going to cater to my generation too with its meta, nostalgic take on the series:
Upset about moving from a big city to a small town, teenager Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) finds a silver lining when he meets the beautiful girl, Hannah (Odeya Rush), living right next door. But every silver lining has a cloud, and Zach’s comes when he learns that Hannah has a mysterious dad who is revealed to be R. L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of the bestselling Goosebumps series. It turns out that there is a reason why Stine is so strange… he is a prisoner of his own imagination – the monsters that his books made famous are real, and Stine protects his readers by keeping them locked up in their books. When Zach unintentionally unleashes the monsters from their manuscripts and they begin to terrorize the town, it’s suddenly up to Stine, Zach, and Hannah to get all of them back in the books where they belong.
Although the film troublingly stars Jack Black (and directed by the Gulliver’s Travels fellow), I can gauge the film wants to capture the books’ mix of humor and horror. And if not, maybe Slappy will touch some Monster Blood and become a huge monstrosity. Goosebumps hits theaters March 23, 2016.
[via /Film]
