Strictly for kids

In today’s movies horror and logic are poles apart. Hence the monsters enter and exit at will. And at times they are even used to evoke humour, quite often lacking in the script. And so it is in ‘Goosebumps’.

It all begins when Gale Cooper (Amy Ryan) and her son Zach (Dylan Minnette) move to Madison, Delaware where Gale is appointed vice-principal and Zach attends the same school. After that Gale lets her son Zach grab centre-stage.

This he does when the girl-next-door Hannah (Odeya Rush) gives him the glad eye much to the ire of her dad Mr Shivers (Jack Black), a mysterious character. An introvert in youth Shivers creates his own world where the monsters are his friends. These are the ones who move in and out with little rhyme and even less reason. By now Shivers admits he is really RL Stine, the horror writer.

Meanwhile, Zach befriends Champ (Ryan Lee), so named as his dad won a bronze at the Olympics. But his face is his fortune, especially when encountering the monsters.

Stine soon elicits the help of Zach, Champ and Hannah to tame his monsters the most troublesome of them being a dolly-dummy (Jack Black’s voice). Is it the Frankenstein’s monster!

May be one is trying to see much more than what meets the eye. The cliché-full screenplay (three heads are much worse than one) gets predictable and director Rob Letterman seems none the wiser. The acting is at best academic and if one has to look for plus points, well it’s Odeya Rush.

Film Name : Goosebumps

Cast : Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush & Amy Ryan

Direction : Rob Letterman

Genre : Horror-fantasy

Likes : Odeya Rush

Dislikes : Screenplay

Rating : **

By Ervell E Menezes