Brow Beat

The Goosebumps Movie Will Basically Be Jumanji Meets Ghostbusters

If you’re a young adult of a certain age—one who experienced their formative pre-teen years in the early to mid-’90s—you may have fond memories of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps book series. And because you’re a child of the ‘90s and thus prone to waxing nostalgic about being a child of the ‘90s, the thought of Goosebumps being rebooted for the big screen is either exciting or devastating.

Your feelings don’t actually matter either way, though, because Goosebumps has been made, and it now has a trailer. Jack Black stars as Stine, a reclusive misanthrope whose monsters—including the Abominable Snowman of Pasadena and the Living Dummy—become unleashed from their apparently magical manuscripts thanks to a couple of nosy teens (Dylan Minnette and Ryan Lee). With the help of those nosy teens and his own daughter (Odeya Rush), Stine must somehow “suck” them all back into the books before they wreak havoc on the world.

If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because, as a child of the ‘90s, you recall that this was the basic premise of Jumanji, the 1996 children’s action movie starring Robin Williams. Throw in the portal-from-another-dimension theme and you’ve also got a play on Ghostbusters. Judging from the rote, obvious sound bites and slapstick moments, it looks like Goosebumps will ultimately be more like the former than the latter: Silly and instantly forgettable.