Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween

• 1. Introduction

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  Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween reached American theaters on the 12th of October, 2018. By then the film had already cycled through two working titles: Goosebumps: HorrorLand and Goosebumps: Slappy's Revenge. Sony Pictures released it through its Columbia Pictures label. It was a stand-alone sequel to 2015's Goosebumps, adapted from R. L. Stine's children's horror book series. Ari Sandel directed, and Rob Lieber wrote the screenplay from a story he developed with Darren Lemke. The film sets two young boys loose in Wardenclyffe, New York. An unpublished manuscript in an abandoned house releases Slappy the Dummy on Halloween night. Getting that story to the screen took more than three years and involved at least one major director change. The question of whether the franchise's biggest human star belonged in the sequel went unresolved for much of that period.

• 2. Three Years in the Making

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  On the 2nd of September, 2015, reports confirmed that Sony was looking for a screenwriter to develop a Goosebumps sequel. Rob Letterman, who had directed the original, was expected to return. On the 17th of January, 2017, Sony announced a release date of the 26th of January, 2018, and Letterman confirmed he would direct again.

  On the 6th of February, 2017, the release was pushed to the 21st of September, 2018. That slot had previously been held by Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. In November 2017, Rob Lieber was brought in to write the screenplay. In December 2017, the release date moved again and Letterman's departure was announced alongside it. His schedule had been committed to directing Detective Pikachu for Legendary Entertainment.

  Ari Sandel was named as the new director. Variety reported that two scripts had been written by that point. One kept Jack Black in the role of R. L. Stine; the other removed him entirely. Odeya Rush had also been expected to return, having played Hannah Fairchild in the original. Her role did not survive into the final script. Ben O'Brien was named as part of the new lead cast but did not appear in the finished film.

  Filming began on the 7th of March, 2018. The title was finalized in April of that year. Mick Wingert was ultimately confirmed as the voice of Slappy, a credit that had initially been assigned to the character's puppeteer.

• 3. Cast and Creatures

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  Jack Black returned to the franchise as R. L. Stine, though his name did not appear in the final credits. A television spot released on the 24th of September, 2018 was what publicly confirmed his appearance. Avery Lee Jones handled Slappy's physical performance through puppetry.

  Madison Iseman, Jeremy Ray Taylor, and Caleel Harris led the new cast as the young protagonists. Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ken Jeong, and Chris Parnell took the adult roles.

  Ryu and Ken Masters, the two fighters from Capcom's Street Fighter series, appear in the film via action figures that Slappy brings to life. Once animated, the figures emit pre-existing voice clips drawn directly from the games.

  Three trailers rolled out before the film's release. The first arrived on the 11th of July, 2018, and an international version on the 16th of August. A third trailer followed on the 20th of September.

• 4. At the Box Office

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  Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween opened in 3,521 theaters, with projections putting its first weekend between $15 million and $21 million. It shared its debut weekend with First Man and Bad Times at the El Royale. On opening day, the film earned $4.9 million, including $750,000 from Thursday night previews. That Thursday figure was up from the $600,000 that the original Goosebumps had taken during its Thursday preview slot. The opening weekend total came to $15.8 million. That result placed the film fourth at the domestic box office, behind Venom, A Star Is Born, and First Man. It also represented a 33% decline from the original Goosebumps, which had opened to $23.6 million.

  In its second weekend, the film grossed $9.7 million, a drop of 38% from the opening. In the United Kingdom, it opened on the 19th of October, 2018, debuting third behind A Star Is Born and Halloween. The full run produced $46.7 million in the United States and Canada, with another $46.6 million from international markets. The worldwide total came to $93.3 million against a $35 million production budget. Digital release followed on the 25th of December, 2018, with DVD and Blu-ray arriving on the 15th of January, 2019.

  Audiences polled by CinemaScore graded the film a B. That was a step down from the A that the first Goosebumps had earned on the same scale. Professional critics, drawing on 93 reviews, landed the film at 48% on Rotten Tomatoes.

• 5. Mixed Verdicts

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  Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average of 53 out of 100, based on 20 critics, a score the site labeled as indicating mixed or average reviews. The published critical consensus called the sequel 'a ding dong to ditch' compared to the first film.

  Bilge Ebiri, writing for Vulture, contrasted the sequel directly with the original. The first Goosebumps, Ebiri wrote, 'had wit, speed, and an imaginative spirit.' He found the sequel 'can't quite make the same claim.' His sharpest verdict: 'The movie feels undercooked on every level.'

  Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club gave the film a C. He acknowledged that it 'gets closer to the spirit of Stine's bestselling books' while sharing 'their reliance on formula.' Vishnevetsky found Sandel's direction of the monster sequences 'never more than workmanlike.'

  Kate Taylor of The Globe and Mail awarded the film three stars out of four. She credited 'a climax that is fresh rather than frantic' with keeping the sequel from the diminishing-returns scenario that plagues most sequels. Taylor concluded that the plot's final pages left enough unresolved about R. L. Stine's fate. That open thread suggested a third installment could bring Black back in a larger role. The film's closing scene is the clearest hint at what that might look like. Slappy, having survived, entraps his creator inside a new Goosebumps story of the dummy's own devising.