BEFORE: Just few days left in October, and I'm hitting a Halloween-based film (you know, one where we see a lot of kids go out trick-or-treating and stuff) just a couple days early, but it is what it is. It's Halloween Week, that's all that's important. This should all make sense by the weekend, I hope. Although it never really makes sense, does it? I'm left with the feeling that I'm probably the only person in the world who would follow "Suspiria" (dark European horror) with "The Addams Family" (an animated movie aimed at...kids?) and then pivot back to "It: Chapter Two" (really scary stuff) and now I'm back on another kids movie. I'm unique, I know it, so why am I not flooded with offers to have a movie review column somewhere (is there a magazine for people with OCD?) or my own TV show. Guess I'll just muddle through without being famous.
Jeremy Ray Taylor carries over from "It: Chapter Two".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Goosebumps" (Movie #3,094)
THE PLOT: Two young friends find a magic book that brings a ventriloquist's dummy, then all of Halloween, to life.
AFTER: Wow, what can I say about a sequel that just borrows elements from the previous film and regurgitates them back at you, without even trying to be original? I haven't seen that happen since, well, "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot". The only thing I can say about this as a horror film is that it really ISN'T a horror film, there's very little that's even remotely scary about it - other than the fact that ventriloquist dummies are creepy. Sure, there are witches, a werewolf or two, maybe a mummy, and that yeti is back from the first film (again, nearly everything from the first film is back in some fashion). One guy gets turned into a troll (?) and basically everybody's Halloween decorations come to life, but it never feels like anybody is in any REAL danger, because it's a movie for kids.
The theory, I guess, is that kids love Halloween and want to see all the plastic and inflatable lawn decorations come to life - but do they? Really? Do I want my candy to be walking around like it's alive? I don't even want to see chickens walking around like they're alive, because then I might feel bad when I eat them, so I certainly don't want to see delicious gummy bears walking around, they'd be too cute to eat.
With the scare factor turned way down, there's little point in having all these beasties come to life, besides, we've SEEN that happen before, it was called "Goosebumps". The makers of the first film were not involved here, and so with an almost completely new cast (Jack Black's the only actor in both films, playing a fictional version of kiddie horror writer R.L. Stine) I guess somebody figured, "Well, let's just keep the same story elements as the last film, so everybody will know it's a sequel." And so therefore no screenwriters had to work hard (or at all) to make this sequel. New setting, new actors, but the same old crap.
Only they felt the need to bring it in under 90 minutes long, and speed through every plot point in the hopes that nobody would notice that it doesn't make any sense, even when you consider that it's a film about fictional monsters coming to life, and jumping out of, then being sucked back into a book. And I find that I can't accuse the film of not following its own internal logic, since it hasn't got any to begin with. Every little story element, from the two teen boys running a junk collection business, to finding the magic book in the creepy house, to the mother flirting with the guy who works at the pharmacy, none of it makes any sense or seems even close to being realistic. Film writers and directors prove once again here that they have NO IDEA what it means to be a kid who goes to school - all filmmakers just seem to fall back on tropes and memes from OTHER movies about bullying, science projects, and gym class. Characters in a movie released in 2018 are still attending classes set in the 1980's, it seems.
Still, it could have been worse - the original drafts for this screenplay were set at a theme-park called "Horrorland", and the only thing I've seen more often than terrible high-school set scripts are terrible amusement park-scripts, like ones where it's clear that a screenwriter doesn't know the difference between a theme park, a circus and a county fair. There are definite differences, only a movie theme park usually ends up being a weird combination of all three. Yes, I'm talking about "Toy Story 4", but it's one of many.
I'm going to focus on just ONE bad script decision here, let's assume it's the worst of many - giant NITPICK POINT occurs when every Halloween decoration comes to life, and the evil ventriloquist doll has had the main characters' mother kidnapped by a giant spider creature made of balloons. Suddenly it's very, very urgent that our heroes go and rescue their mother, but instead they then spend several HOURS disguising themselves in elaborate costumes (because the neighbor character is obsessed with decorating, and has a whole design studio in his house) so they can cross the town safely while it's crawling with monsters. WHAT? If their mother had been kidnapped by ravenous flesh-eating zombies, and they had to rush to save her, would it make sense to bring in a Hollywood make-up artist to make them look like zombies, spending three hours (minimum) in a make-up chair, just so they could go and save her? It might be a clever plan, but by the time they finish disguising themselves, Mom's already been eaten.
There is, however, one thing that's CLOSE to an interesting idea, and maybe if someone had invested a little more time and effort, it could have amounted to something - this is set in a New York town called Wardenclyffe, and features an abandoned factory and tower with a statue of Nikola Tesla in front of it. The lead teen, Sonny, does his science project on Tesla by building a diorama of the factory and tower, and making the tower electrically powered for some reason. (Again, the director made a conscious decision to not get bogged down in any details, because he was on a tight schedule, apparently.).
Now, there WAS a real Wardenclyffe Tower, built at the laboratory of the real Nikola Tesla (only in the real town of Shoreham, NY) and the real story about this tower is more fascinating than anything seen in "Goosebumps 2". It looked a bit like the Coney Island parachute drop, but this was essentially the first cel tower ever built, sort of. Tesla wanted to use it to send electronic messages, even faxes, to England and also to ships at sea. His work was financed by J.P. Morgan and he was on a course to show that Marconi fellow a thing or two. Tesla was planning to inject electric current into the Earth at just the right frequency, to harness the planet's own electrical charge and thus amplify his waves to send signals across the globe, umm, or something like that. It's all very technical. I guess we're all lucky he didn't blow up the world in 1902 with this.
At any rate, he had the tower built as an eventual replacement for the telegraph, so essentially, Tesla was just a man ahead of his time. The facility that once held all of his generators, transformers, Tesla coils and a whole bunch of tubes and wires is still there, but the tower was dismantled in 1917 and sold for scrap. Tesla had suffered a nervous breakdown in 1906 after financial problems. Many of his patents had expired, and plans to commercialize his inventions came to naught. For several decades (1970's and 80's) the building was home to AGFA, the photography giant. It's now on the Registry of Historic Places, and funds have been raised to turn it into a science museum. This is all the sort of thing I find fascinating, and perhaps I'll gain more insight when I watch the 2020 film "Tesla", starring Ethan Hawke, and also there's a film running on cable now called "The Current War", with Benedict Cumberbatch as Edison and Nicholas Hoult as Tesla. But that's something to think about for next year.
"Goosebumps 2" really glosses over the Tesla sub-plot, even when Sonny delivers his science report on the famous man, it's noticeably void of any details. That's a mistake, they had ONE chance to drop a tiny bit of knowledge on today's kids, and they blew it. The rest of the film has no nutritional value, it's even worse than Halloween candy in that regard. It's more like orange cotton candy, with a quick buzz, but it dissolves so fast that you're left with a too-sweet aftertaste, and nothing more.
Also starring Madison Iseman (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Caleel Harris, Wendi McLenon-Covey (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Chris Parnell (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Ken Jeong (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Jack Black (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Bryce Cass (last seen in "Battle Los Angeles"), Peyton Wich, Kendrick Cross (last seen in "Father Figures"), Shari Headley, Courtney Lauren Cummings (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Jessi Goei, the voice of Mick Wingert (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 3"), with a cameo from R.L. Stine (last seen in "Goosebumps").
RATING: 3 out of 10 poorly-carved pumpkins
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