Disney+ and Hulu’s Goosebumps Is Decent, But Can’t Hang With the Teen Horror Greats

For those who aren’t regularly touring the Scholastic Book Fair, it’s easy to forget that the Goosebumps novels are a veritable industrial complex with over 400 million copies sold, which apparently makes it the second highest-selling book franchise of all time. As a popular gateway for younger audiences into a world of supernatural scares, these stories have unsurprisingly spawned plenty of adaptations, including the ’95 television series and a pair of recent films. The latest in this tradition is a new show from Rob Letterman (who previously directed the metatextual 2015 flick) that follows a group of high schoolers tormented by strange objects from a haunted house. 

While Goosebumps (2023) eventually builds towards interesting mysteries, the initial five episodes available for review feel awkwardly stuck between different modes of horror. It has shades of the anthology-styled storytelling of the previous TV show, the messy relationship dynamics of teen dramas, and supernatural thrills, but it’s unable to fully deliver on any of these elements, making for a decently entertaining but far from exceptional entry in this October’s festivities. 

As we have seen in many teenage romps, we follow an eclectic group of high schoolers from across the stratified social hierarchy of suburbia. There’s Isaiah (Zack Morris), a star quarterback whose parents have a lot riding on his sports career, his whip-smart childhood friend Margot (Isa Briones), Isaiah’s best buddy James (Miles McKenna) who’s one of the few queer people in town, daredevil Lucas (Will Price) who is still  reeling from the loss of his father, and social outcast Isabella (Ana Yi Puig) who secretly hates her peers. After a party at an abandoned home where a kid died in the ‘90s, all five find themselves tormented by strange objects from the house that tie into a greater mystery from their parents’ pasts.

At first, these episodes faintly resemble the original anthology TV series, with each primarily focusing on one of the previously mentioned characters as they struggle against a cursed artifact from the old Biddle house (many of which are direct references to the previous show and books). In a vacuum, an episodic structure is a perfect fit for horror, as it allows for a broad range of kooky concepts while creating life-or-death stakes because its protagonists don’t need to be around for the next one. However, that isn’t quite the approach here, and although there are traces of a standalone cadence, this is a serialized story that makes clear it intends to keep its major players around, sapping out tension because these teens don’t feel like they’re in true mortal danger.

That’s not to say  that there isn’t any effective horror at work here. As for the actual setups for each episode, some make for inventive scenarios that are both viscerally and intellectually upsetting: a Polaroid camera that alludes to a horrible, unavoidable fate for those who are captured through its lens or a scrapbook that whisks our characters into the past, revealing unsettling secrets about people they thought they knew. Other situations begin interesting before petering out, as the need to connect to a larger plot limits their range of possibilities and makes them lack the type of shocking conclusion that frequently accompanies a more one-off format.

It doesn’t help that the series struggles to generate tension during many of its otherworldly encounters. You can frequently predict the next beat coming before it lands, making many of its scares feel formulaic. This is made worse by cheesy CGI effects that accompany the specter haunting the cast, proving why many of the best works in the space choose to obscure the monster until a terrifying last-act reveal. Some moments do succeed at creating unsettling imagery, such as a shadowy presence encountered in the woods, surprisingly grisly body horror, or a few gross-out moments, but these are flanked by less compelling material.

As for its protagonists and their personal issues, while at first this group comes across as the type of irritating adolescents who meet brutal ends in a slasher film, they eventually gain slightly more depth that moves them past being complete stock archetypes. At its best, the previously mentioned haunted relics in the first five episodes align with these characters’ underlying problems, exposing their fears and doubts. The most compelling example of this comes with Lucas, who is taken from a reckless class clown to someone we realize is going through genuinely tough times. And although the members of this group are at each other’s throats at the start, their shared experiences create messy love triangles and bonding that largely works. 

The adults are also fairly interesting in their own right, and they work either as flawed but complex people trying to do right by their kids or painfully overbearing figures who work as a stand-in for how kids often view their parents. Another highlight comes when the malicious spirit of an edge lord teenager impersonates what they imagine an adult man is like, proving that awkward social interactions can be just as scary as knife-wielding murderers.

However, Goosebumps’ most successful stroke, and the reason I will probably check out the rest of it despite the up and down qualities of its other elements, is that it gestures at a compelling mystery from the past that I would like to see solved. Its fifth episode, the highlight of the bunch, gives us a firmer grasp of why these horrible things are happening to these people and offers a glimpse at a decades-old secret that binds them.  

Still, this Goosebumps show frequently seems unsure of what kind of horror tale it wants to be and what demographic it wants to pursue. It comes across as too tame to match the bone-chilling qualities of adult-oriented stabs at the genre and a tad too gnarly for young kids. I gradually warmed up to its cast, and its teen drama improved with time, but its first few episodes were only serviceable. Although it has redeeming qualities like its central intrigue, its formulaic scares and initially archetypal characters feel too by the book.

Goosebumps premieres Friday, October 13th on Disney+ and Hulu. 

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant TV editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves videogames, film, and creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.

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