Goosebumps

Now that it is October, many Halloween media has dropped. I thought I would start with the new Goosebumps series on Hulu. I am a total Goosebumps kid, I used to read the books and my dad, brother and I would all watch the original movies when I was younger. So as someone who is already a fan of the concept I thought we’d check out the new series.

The first episode starts with a flashback to 1993 (kind of hate that that's a historical era now but whatever). Wow this is just using every trope possible; Girl brings a book to a prep rally (because how else will we know that she’s not like other girls), football player academically ineligible to play…and he must pass a “big” history to test in order to play…because there will be scouts at the game. Be more basic, and uncreative. And as a little cherry on top, not-like-other-girls Margot definitely has a childhood crush on this football player.

Isaiah’s little girlfriend is kind of a bitch, and she’s super annoying.

Honestly it just took too long to get to the actual story. The cold open helped set up the show but then we did like a 30 minute long set up and it was so unnecessary.

I get that we are following one of the teenagers in each episode but all that really does is lead to no real conclusion for any of their stories. It was way too slow a build for absolutely no pay off whatsoever. Also we end with the tropiest trope ever, the adults did something bad and now the kids are being haunted.

What I don’t understand is trying to get creative with adaptations. The books are right there, they are good and they have their own built in fan base so why are we trying to add unnecessary structure?

The idea that the girl that feels invisible in the school's social media handle is @yourfavoritetroll is so funny to me. See the characters in this adaptation are actually very good, the dialogue has some truly spectacular moment, the acting and casting is so spot on we are just leaning far too into horrible plot tropes.

Okay now both kids that have been “haunted” came into contact with this mask. So at the very least we have continuity.

So we are following the trend of super dark cinematography and it's terrible. I should not need to crank up the brightness on my TV AND watch in a pitch black room in order to see anything. Can we not afford lights anymore?

I think the biggest critique of this new series is that it simply isn’t scary…why am I not being traumatized? Why do I not have nightmares? That was a core part of reading and watching Goosebumps as a kid.

We also seem to be getting really caught up in the whole, the parents did something and now it's terrorizing our children. Pretty sure Riverdale did the same plotline and do we really want to do anything that Riverdale did?

Look this was a vaguely good idea but the weak points of its execution are so weak that it makes the show actually hard to watch. No one wants to watch something full of overused tropes with absolutely no new twist on them. The cinematography being too dark is non-negotiably bad. That is a trend that needs to die, you can convey nighttime or that the room is dark without it being unwatchable for the audience. Filmmakers have been doing that for decades and we need to get it together.