HAUNTED HALLOWEEN is the second film in the GOOSEBUMPS franchise and a typically light horror-style adventure for kids. The emphasis is on creepy, CGI-fuelled creations, with an ordinary group of kids finding themselves menaced by all manner of Halloween themed weirdness, including living pumpkins. The ringleading antagonist is a living ventriloquist's doll, although he's overdone a bit and makes you long for the days of MAGIC and DEAD OF NIGHT. The good news is that Jack Black has far less screen time here, although the main actress looks about ten years too old for her role and the interplay with the kids feels more than a little tired.

Aspiring writer Sarah Quinn (Madison Iseman) is struggling with her college entry essay. Her boyfriend just wants to have fun. Her nerdy brother Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor) annoys her. He and his best friend Sam Carter (Caleel Harris) have started a junk business. They are called to clean out the abandoned childhood home of R.L. Stine (Jack Black). They find Stine's book. Ventriloquist dummy Slappy suddenly appears and Sonny unknowingly brings him back to life. Slappy wants to be a part of his family unleashing chaos during Halloween.

This is pretty good for a TV Goosebumps movie on a kiddie channel. As a theatrical offering, it doesn't have the grandeur or the scares to cross over into adult or teen market. In addition, it's tough to sell parents to take their little kids to a horror movie. It's stuck somewhere in no man's land. It needs to be a little darker and a little more theatrical to get the teens. Jack Black phones in his fifteen minutes and delivers one good joke. The kids are fine but nothing that special. The writing misses a few things. Sarah needs to physically write in the book with a pen to wrap up that aspect of the story. Slappy is interesting and could deliver more sequels. The franchise is unlikely to break out and is probably on a declining trajectory. It's stuck in kiddie horror land.

In the second Goosebumps Cinematic Universe, some kids (of course) have some issues. There's Madison Iseman, who's terrified she's not going to be able to finish her essay on fear and get into an Ivy League University; there's her kid brother and his best friend, who are bullied in school. The boys run a business carting away old junk for free, figuring they'll find some stuff worth reselling in the trash. When they're called on to empty the attic of an abandoned house, they do: Slappy the demonic ventriloquist's dummy. He proceeds to turn half the town into monsters.

Like the earlier movie, Jack Black plays R.L. Stine in the second half of the movie -- the real author gets a cameo near the end. It's juvenile, of course, and rather silly, but there are some of the anxieties that kids really experience, and the humor is deliberate and the special effects good.