Goosebumps (2015)

A teenager teams up with the daughter of young adult horror author R.L. Stine after the writer's imaginary demons are set free on the town of Greendale, Maryland.

Director:
Rob Letterman
Writers:
Darren Lemke (screenplay), Scott Alexander (story)
Stars:
Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush 

Storyline

Upset about moving from a big city to a small town, teenager Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) finds a silver lining when he meets the beautiful girl, Hannah (Odeya Rush), living right next door. But every silver lining has a cloud, and Zach's comes when he learns that Hannah has a mysterious dad who is revealed to be R. L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of the bestselling Goosebumps series. It turns out that there is a reason why Stine is so strange... he is a prisoner of his own imagination - the monsters that his books made famous are real, and Stine protects his readers by keeping them locked up in their books. When Zach unintentionally unleashes the monsters from their manuscripts and they begin to terrorize the town, it's suddenly up to Stine, Zach, Hannah, and Zach's friend Champ (Ryan Lee) to get all of them back in the books where they belong. 

Movie Reviews:

Instead of adapting any one or a select few of Stine's 100-plus "Goosebumps" tales, the filmmakers opt for a greatest-hits mishmash that prioritizes the spectacle of a parade of monsters over any attempt at atmosphere or mystery. The result is like gorging on trick-or- treat candy — it may sound like a fun idea, but you'll pay for it later.

Clean-cut teen protagonist Zach (Dylan Minnette) moves with his widowed mom (a grossly underused Amy Ryan) from New York to sleepy suburban Madison, Del. Hoping for a fresh start in the wake of his father's untimely death, Zach finds an immediate distraction in the enigmatic girl next door, Hannah (Odeya Rush), whose overprotective father (Jack Black) warns Zach in no uncertain terms to stay away.

That's especially hard to do when — in a "Rear Window" homage — Zach spies a father-daughter argument and Hannah disappears. Soon enough, a meta twist reveals that Hannah's father is actually author R.L. Stine. He lives in seclusion to protect his original "Goosebumps" manuscripts, which have the power to manifest the monsters described within when opened.