Directed by Rob Letterman (Monsters vs. Aliens; Shark Tale; Gulliver's Travels) and starring Jack Black (The School of Rock; High Fidelity; Kung Fu Panda; King Kong; Gulliver's Travels), Dylan Minnette (Prisoners; various tv series), Odeya Rush (We Are What We Are; The Giver).
Children's adventure, 103 mins, in English, 6+
In basically a cross between Jumanji and Gremlins with a bit of Ghostbusters thrown in, the silver screen version of Goosebumps tells the story of a couple of cute teenagers who let monsters escape and spend the rest of the film trying to get ride of them, while surviving to tell the tale. Although that's the basic premise of the film, there are not really any plot spoilers there...
The storyline for what it is starts off with Zach (Dylan Minnette) moving into a small town in the US with his mother Lorraine (Jillian Bell) who has been appointed vice-principal at the local high school where Zach will also attend. Zach discovers that the girl next door, Hannah (Odeya Rush)'s father is none other than R.L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of hundreds of horror fiction novels for children. Together with Champ (Ryan Lee), Zach enters the house to help save Hannah from her overbearing father, and together they set of a chain of events which involves monsters wreaking havoc on the town and the local community. The reason that R.L. Stine is anti-social is because he is a prisoner of his own imagination, and together they have to work out how to redress the problem so they can all escape alive.
A family adventure primarily for young teenagers with plenty of scare moments to keep youngsters on the edge of their seats. While some of the sub-plots may be wafer-thin, without them the main storyline would be even weaker; it may be thin but essentially the film is the next stage in the Goosebumps phenonemon which started with the hugely popular book series and then the television series.
Goosebumps is now screening at Utopolis-Kirchberg and Utopolis-Belval.
