The Spool / Reviews
Goosebumps exceeds expectations by not talking down to its target audience
The Disney+ adaptation delivers age-appropriate spooky scares that work.
NetworkDisney+ Hulu
Similar'Cause You're My Boy, 2Moons: The Series, A Dance to the Music of Time, A Discovery of Witches, A League of Nobleman, A River Runs Through It, A Shop for Killers, A Touch of Frost, About a Boy, Agatha Christie's Poirot Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor, All Creatures Great & Small, Amazing Stories, American Gothic, American Horror Story, And Then There was One Yuriko, Annika, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Arthur, Babel, Battle for Happiness, Bitter Blood, Black Books Boy Swallows Universe, Brand New Cherry Flavor, Brimstone, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?, Carp Reborn, Count Your Lucky Stars, Creature, Cruel Summer, Crusher Joe: The OVA's, Cybersix, Dangerous Liaisons, Dark, Dark Winds, Dead Ringers, Devil in Ohio, Dexter Dramarama, Eternal Faith, Fate/Apocrypha, From, Further Tales of the City, Fushigi Dagashiya: Zenitendou, Game of Thrones Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Gossip Girl Grace's History, Halo: The Fall of Reach, Harlan Coben's Shelter, He's Into Her, Hero Return, Higurashi: When They Cry, HIStory How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, I Feel You Linger in the Air, I Know What You Did Last Summer, I'm a Virgo, I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss, If Tomorrow Comes, Kakuriyo -Bed & Breakfast for Spirits-, Kamenskaya, Kiss Me First, Kita Yoshio's Tomorrow, Love Between Fairy and Devil, Love By Chance, Lupin, M*A*S*H Made for Love, Magpie Murders, Management of a Novice Alchemist, Mayfair Witches, Metal Hurlant Chronicles, Miracle Workers, Miss Marple: A Pocketful of Rye, Miss Marple: Nemesis, Miss Marple: The Body in the Library, Miss Marple: The Moving Finger, Monarch of the Glen More Tales of the City, Mr. Mercedes, Murder Most Horrid, My Fantastic Mrs Right, My Ride, My School President, Nero Wolfe i Archie Goodwin, Notes from the Underbelly, Open Your Eyes, Ordeal by Innocence, Paul T. Goldman, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Place of Execution, Planet of the Apes Polisen i Strömstad, Pollyanna, Re:Mind, Resurrection, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Ridley, Shangri-La, Shangri-La Frontier, Sherlock Holmes Soul Land, Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Station Eleven, Supernatural, Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Neverending Story Tales of the Walking Dead, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, The 100, The 4400, The Alienist, The Cicada's Eighth Day, The Colour of Magic, The Dain Curse, The Echo, The Family Game, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Ice House, The Ingenious One, The Irresponsible Captain Tylor OVA, The Jungle, The Kidnapping Day, The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, The Long Night, The Many Faces of Ito, The Moon Embracing the Sun, The Night Agent, The Passage, The Pilot's Love Song, The Return of the Condor Heroes, The Serial Killer's Wife, The Shining The Sign, The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, The Strain, The Sympathizer, The Tatami Time Machine Blues, The Twilight Zone, The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, The Wimbledon Poisoner, The Witness for the Prosecution, The Woods, ThunderCats, Tientsin Mystic, Transformation, Troubles, Twin Peaks, We Rent Tsukumogami, Wedding Impossible, White Teeth, Why Try to Change Me Now, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, Witchcraft, Wolf Pack, Yonder, Каменская - 3,
Watch afterAhsoka, Black Mirror Futurama, Game of Thrones Gen V Loki Lupin, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Rick and Morty Star Trek: Strange New Worlds The End of the F***ing World, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Queen's Gambit The Simpsons
StudioOriginal Film, Sony Pictures Television Studios
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The Disney+ adaptation delivers age-appropriate spooky scares that work.

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the works being covered here wouldn’t exist.

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Do we need another live-action Goosebumps adaptation? After a ’90s Fox Kids series and a pair of 2010s films, one would assume that the ground of turning Slappy the dummy and other frightening beings into flesh-and-blood creations has been well-trodden. 

Shockingly, the new Disney+/Hulu program Goosebumps quickly puts other incarnations out of one’s mind. What could’ve been just another October-themed cash grab proves more of treat than trick. Viewer beware! You’re in for some (actually enjoyable) scares.

This particular adaptation of Goosebumps focuses on a collection of original teen characters, including football star Lucas (Will Price), the uber-nervous and pragmatic James (Miles McKenna), and internet troll Isabella (Ana Yi Puig). These adolescents have seemingly ordinary lives until they discover a local house’s basement. Filled with knick-knacks and supernatural powers, the cellar soon begins impacting their lives for the worse. These items are all rooted in elements from the original Goosebumps books, including a camera that can predict unfortunate future events or a haunted mask that brings out the worst in the wearer.

Goosebumps (Disney+)
Count us in for Justin Long, mildly weird horror icon. (Disney+/David Astorga)

New-to-town high school teacher Nathan Bratt (Justin Long) buys the spooky house. Before long, he’s possessed by the spirit of a dead teenager while doing a crossword puzzle one night. As if it weren’t bad enough to deal with malicious clones or extremely unorthodox worms, this undead teen has begun an elaborate revenge plot involving the protagonists, tormented parents, and plenty of beasties from the Goosebumps books.

In a wise decision, showrunners Nicholas Stoller and Rob Letterman (the director of 2015’s Goosebumps feature) opt to divide each episode into loose adaptations of the novels. This balances the serialized nature of the series with an episodic vibe that prevents it from mushing together into one binge-watch blur. Another smart choice is the creators’ willingness to take the familiar artifacts into drastically new directions. That ensures the production isn’t just doing hollow rehashes of previously adapted material. There’s something new here for newcomers and long-time R.L. Stine devotees alike.

Best of all, Goosebumps commits to actually feeling like a frightening show for younger audiences, in contrast to a comedy with one or two bursts of frights like Disney’s recent Haunted Mansion movie. There’s nothing graphic here, but directors like Erin O’Malley and Steve Boyum let darker or frightening moments breathe. They resist the constant obligation to have someone deliver a ham-fisted “silly line” to undercut these tension-filled sequences. Additionally, they shore up the spooky with a terrific score by The Newton Brothers. Their experiences working with the films and shows of Mike Flanagan, among others, serve this series extremely well, incorporating discordant noises or electronic flourishes in their compositions. How nice to watch a modern TV program that trusts younger audiences with an appropriately eerie tone.

Best of all, Goosebumps commits to actually feeling like a frightening show for younger audiences.

If there is a weak link here, it’s the writing. Take, for instance, attempts to provide brief glimpses of the possessed Nathan across the first few episodes. Even a game performance from Long can’t hide how these moments are little more the setup for future storytelling, too divorced from the action to be compelling. Meanwhile, writers like Franklin Jin Rho and Courtney Perdue try far too hard to cram an excessive amount of modern lingo into the teens’ dialogue. When such phrases already sound dated, the mind reels to imagine how they’ll play in a few years. Talented performers like McKenna can only do so much in executing this kind of dialogue.

Still, some clumsy references to Facebook and “trolls” aren’t enough to derail the nicely realized charms of Goosebumps. Even with a litany of other adaptations preceding it, it never feels like nostalgic fan service. After all, how can one go wrong with a spooky show that manages to wriggle in needle drops from the likes of SZA and Nine Inch Nails?

Goosebumps starts raises your hair on October 13 on Disney+.

Goosebumps Trailer:

NetworkDisney+ Hulu
Similar'Cause You're My Boy, 2Moons: The Series, A Dance to the Music of Time, A Discovery of Witches, A League of Nobleman, A River Runs Through It, A Shop for Killers, A Touch of Frost, About a Boy, Agatha Christie's Poirot Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor, All Creatures Great & Small, Amazing Stories, American Gothic, American Horror Story, And Then There was One Yuriko, Annika, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Arthur, Babel, Battle for Happiness, Bitter Blood, Black Books Boy Swallows Universe, Brand New Cherry Flavor, Brimstone, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?, Carp Reborn, Count Your Lucky Stars, Creature, Cruel Summer, Crusher Joe: The OVA's, Cybersix, Dangerous Liaisons, Dark, Dark Winds, Dead Ringers, Devil in Ohio, Dexter Dramarama, Eternal Faith, Fate/Apocrypha, From, Further Tales of the City, Fushigi Dagashiya: Zenitendou, Game of Thrones Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Gossip Girl Grace's History, Halo: The Fall of Reach, Harlan Coben's Shelter, He's Into Her, Hero Return, Higurashi: When They Cry, HIStory How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, I Feel You Linger in the Air, I Know What You Did Last Summer, I'm a Virgo, I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss, If Tomorrow Comes, Kakuriyo -Bed & Breakfast for Spirits-, Kamenskaya, Kiss Me First, Kita Yoshio's Tomorrow, Love Between Fairy and Devil, Love By Chance, Lupin, M*A*S*H Made for Love, Magpie Murders, Management of a Novice Alchemist, Mayfair Witches, Metal Hurlant Chronicles, Miracle Workers, Miss Marple: A Pocketful of Rye, Miss Marple: Nemesis, Miss Marple: The Body in the Library, Miss Marple: The Moving Finger, Monarch of the Glen More Tales of the City, Mr. Mercedes, Murder Most Horrid, My Fantastic Mrs Right, My Ride, My School President, Nero Wolfe i Archie Goodwin, Notes from the Underbelly, Open Your Eyes, Ordeal by Innocence, Paul T. Goldman, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Place of Execution, Planet of the Apes Polisen i Strömstad, Pollyanna, Re:Mind, Resurrection, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Ridley, Shangri-La, Shangri-La Frontier, Sherlock Holmes Soul Land, Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Station Eleven, Supernatural, Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Neverending Story Tales of the Walking Dead, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, The 100, The 4400, The Alienist, The Cicada's Eighth Day, The Colour of Magic, The Dain Curse, The Echo, The Family Game, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Ice House, The Ingenious One, The Irresponsible Captain Tylor OVA, The Jungle, The Kidnapping Day, The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, The Long Night, The Many Faces of Ito, The Moon Embracing the Sun, The Night Agent, The Passage, The Pilot's Love Song, The Return of the Condor Heroes, The Serial Killer's Wife, The Shining The Sign, The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, The Strain, The Sympathizer, The Tatami Time Machine Blues, The Twilight Zone, The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, The Wimbledon Poisoner, The Witness for the Prosecution, The Woods, ThunderCats, Tientsin Mystic, Transformation, Troubles, Twin Peaks, We Rent Tsukumogami, Wedding Impossible, White Teeth, Why Try to Change Me Now, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, Witchcraft, Wolf Pack, Yonder, Каменская - 3,
Watch afterAhsoka, Black Mirror Futurama, Game of Thrones Gen V Loki Lupin, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Rick and Morty Star Trek: Strange New Worlds The End of the F***ing World, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Queen's Gambit The Simpsons
StudioOriginal Film, Sony Pictures Television Studios