Things That Go Bump

Hulu’s 2023 series adaptation of RL Stine’s Goosebumps is a bumpy and nostalgic horror hayride. Its teen characters have brains and personalities, instead of being empty and oversexualized. It’s a deadly delight to watch these brains and minds scrambled by the cleverly interwoven classic tales of horror, high school hell, teen angst, and monsters!

As an old millenial and life long bookworm, I was stoked to see this adaptation, whether good, bad, or ghoulish. As a kid, I knew witches were real, and that there was a ghost in our attic. I fought over copies of the books in the 90’s with my siblings and cousins, and was immersed in the spookiness along with millions of other kids all around the globe. I watched scary shows at home alone, peering behind dark corners in fear long after the TV was off! This show arriving this month is the little haunted participation trophy we all needed.

Goosebumps; opening scene mashes nostalgia with context building spookiness. REM blares as we see a pale angsty teen leaving his high school alone, wearing a 90’s red flannel like Angela Chase in My So Called Life and every cool person ever since. Then we zoom out and see our protagonist heading homeward towards a creepy house in the woods, complete with shots of a New England looking Stephen King-esque harbour town. Deep dark woods, varsity letter jackets, Victorian architecture, what could go wrong? Soon 1993 explodes with fire, teen death, the supernatural, and the distinct feeling that this show is a bit scarier than the Scholastic paperbacks!

Goosebumps names its episodes after the books’ most iconic titles, “Say Cheese and Die”, “The Cuckoo Clock of Doom”, “Night of the Living Dummy”, and interweaves its characters lives in clever ways that it reveals episode by episode. Each focuses on a different and harrowing experience of a student at St. Lawrence High. The show immerses us in the high school as hell, monster as metaphor, and gives us existential thrills as the mystery of the characters’ connections unfolds. In addition to the supernatural, these students are facing divorce, latchkey kid culture, grief, vengeful homicidal ghosts, and history tests! They are overburdened, and under-parented. Will they  learn to work as a team to survive into adulthood? Or will they lose, betrayed by grownups and their own fears and weaknesses?

The 90’s TV series definitely has a more iconic opening theme (add it to your Halloween playlists!), with its synthesizer, pre CGI effects, and RL Stine himself narrating “Viewers beware, you’re in for a scare!” Behold, reader, our first young victim is also wearing a red flannel! A hometown middle school girl terrorizes her neighborhood seeking revenge on her bully tormentors; the show alludes to a lesson learned at the end. However, true to the books, these are never quite too scary. It’s more monster of the week, the adults are only peripheral, it doesn’t develop themes, and doesn’t connect the kids’ stories. Fun, but not exactly a brain drain.

The new series goes a lot deeper and darker than both the 1995 series and Jack Black’s 2015 PG-rated film adaptation. It’s not all haunted basement of the mind though. They pace spooky scenes with dad jokes, awkward teen romance, and a snappy soundtrack. Our modern times are complex, hence we have campy monsters, nut allergies, intergenerational trauma AND bullying!

Like all the incantations in Goosebumps, costumes and dark desires come to life, worms portent bullying and supernatural forces, and only love can save you. This fresh take, with developed and tastefully dressed characters, the good acting, an LGBTQIA+ storyline and inclusive casting, is just what we need to face any gloopy gloomy Jolly Rancher-flavored doom that we encounter in the season’s last four episodes.