Chair de poule 2 : Les Fantômes d'Halloween

I revisited this yesterday with my nephew n daughter. This one is a stand alone sequel n apart from Jack Black in a tiny role, none of the cast from the previous film returns here.

This time two young boys gets hold of an unpublished n unfinished Goosebumps book titled Haunted Halloween. How the book is kept in the dilapidated n abandoned house is never explained. They also find Slappy n brings it to life by speaking magic words found in the dummy's pocket. So a lil confusion here. Slappy is found aft opening the book but he comes alive aft the magic words. Also Slappy brings all the Halloween monsters to life including the Werewolf n Snowman, albeit in a tiny role n that too without opening any book.

The first goosebumps movie that came out in 2015 was fun, dark, and deffently for all audiences. This one felt like a rip off from modern movie IT, or stranger things. The actors at times got on my nerves and frankly Slappy as the main bad guy felt boring and I feel he is being over used. Also all of the monsters being out at the same time felt like a repetition of part 1 except the cast was younger and more annoying. 1. Would I see it again? Yea 2. Was it worth buying a ticket? No 3. Was the acting good? No 4. Was the music good? No 5. Costumes and fx good? Yes 6. Would I see it with a friend? Yes 7. Will I buy it on disc? No 8. Should you wait for it on DVD? Yes 9. Did i have fun? Yes 10. Is it a good movie? Yea...ish.

I quite enjoyed Goosebumps (2015) it was silly larger than life fun based on books I certainly enjoyed as a child. I did however not expect a sequel!

Led by two very entertaining kids, flanked by the always likeable Wendi McLendon-Covey and less so Ken Jeong the movies cast is a solid one.

SFX? Ropey in places but the movie is on a big scale, monsters of all shapes and sizes so the cgi is rife.

Plot? Highly generic stuff but passable enough to kill 90 minutes with.

So where do the real issues lay? Well the tone seems rather different, this doesn't feel like a loyal Goosebumps sequel it feels like something you'd watch on a Saturday morning with your kids. It feels like Kenan & Kel Halloween special, the horror is pretty much non-existent and instead is a full on goofy family comedy. That really damaged the film for me, sure I didn't expect actual horror but a degree of threat like the first movie would have been nice and not a full on children's movie. Absolutely no parental supervision needed for this one!

I enjoyed all the wacky monsters, I liked how bright and colorful the whole thing was and how the two leads managed to be likeable despite my hatred for kids. Haunted Halloween isn't bad, it's just very disappointing and if this is the direction they're going in then I'm not fussed for any more films.

The Good:

Looks great for the most part

Cast do a decent job

Great monsters

The Bad:

CGI fails in places

Saturday morning tone did nothing for me

Aspiring writer Sarah Quinn (Madison Iseman) is struggling with her college entry essay. Her boyfriend just wants to have fun. Her nerdy brother Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor) annoys her. He and his best friend Sam Carter (Caleel Harris) have started a junk business. They are called to clean out the abandoned childhood home of R.L. Stine (Jack Black). They find Stine's book. Ventriloquist dummy Slappy suddenly appears and Sonny unknowingly brings him back to life. Slappy wants to be a part of his family unleashing chaos during Halloween.

This is pretty good for a TV Goosebumps movie on a kiddie channel. As a theatrical offering, it doesn't have the grandeur or the scares to cross over into adult or teen market. In addition, it's tough to sell parents to take their little kids to a horror movie. It's stuck somewhere in no man's land. It needs to be a little darker and a little more theatrical to get the teens. Jack Black phones in his fifteen minutes and delivers one good joke. The kids are fine but nothing that special. The writing misses a few things. Sarah needs to physically write in the book with a pen to wrap up that aspect of the story. Slappy is interesting and could deliver more sequels. The franchise is unlikely to break out and is probably on a declining trajectory. It's stuck in kiddie horror land.

I decided to watch "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween" because I did actually thoroughly enjoy the previous "Goosebumps" movie from 2015. And based on that movie, then I actually had high hopes for "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween".

While "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween" definitely was a visually pleasing movie, then it was just a very unnecessary sequel. Why? Well, because it was essentially the exact same as the 2015 movie, just changed the scenery, the monsters, and the characters. But the essence of the storyline and the outcome was the exact same thing. So that felt very anti-climatic and very much like a slap to the face with a cold, dead fish.

If you haven't already seen the 2015 "Goosebumps" movie then this sequel will be a good movie to watch. However, if you already did see the 2015 one, then there virtually is no need to watch "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween". I am not kidding.

The CGI department definitely did not fail to deliver, because the CGI in the movie were quite good, just as they were in the previous movie. And that is actually the selling point to "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween", sad to say.

This is very much a sequel in the very definition of a sequel. So it was soup being boiled on watered down broth.