Halloween Die-ary: October 14, 2018

Today, our big event was to go see Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween at the theater.

These days, you almost have to make a dedicated calendar for all the new Halloween and horror programming coming out this time of year. In theaters, across a dozen streaming services, on TV. Freddy Krueger on The Goldbergs, Mick Garris on Halloween Wars, the Hocus Pocus special, the new Halloween movie, Hell Fest, The Haunting of Hill House, Thriller in 3D, Eli Roth’s History of Horror, American Horror Story, etc., etc. And that’s all in addition to the traditional specials and movies you want to work into the season.

If I’m not careful, I’ll end up spending my entire Halloween Season in front of a screen…which is fine, honestly—nothing wrong with a good Hallow-screen—but it doesn’t help me with my goal of finding Halloween adventure.

Although getting to the Goosebumps movie was a little bit of an adventure. At first, Lindsey backed out. Understandably, she just couldn’t put up with a public theater in her state of late-stage pregnancy. Then my youngest exploded in a storm of tiny monsters that ravaged the family and ruined everybody’s morning, so she wasn’t allowed to come. That left my eldest and I. Which was fun. The whole weekend has been the two of us together: At the haunted hallway, walking around Salem, and now going to the movies.

Finally we left for the morning showing. As I drove out of the garage, I noticed that the front lawn was covered in leaves: Green grass with flecks of yellow and brown. It’s that time of the season for us.

I was hoping the theater would have the awesome cardboard standee of Michael Myers in the closet, but it didn’t. However, it did have Fanta fruit monsters on all of its cups so that more than made up for it.

As to the Goosebumps movie, it was…fine. I love the concept: Everything Halloween-related comes alive. Not just monsters, but decorations and pumpkins, all the way down to trick-or-treat sacks. A lot of fun could (and was) had with that in the movie. There was also a lot of great Halloween scenery and, surprisingly, that monster gummy bear scene turned out to be pretty effective (even Halloween candy comes to life). And they included Tesla's Wardenclyffe.

I think my biggest problem with the movie was Slappy as the main bad guy. I’m just not that into Slappy. I don’t find him imposing or creepy or anything that a villain, even (and especially) in a kid’s movie, should be. And they’ve hung two movies on that piece of painted wood now.

Once we got back home, the girls played outside, I wrote up the OTIS Club newsletter, and we all just took it easy until finally Lindsey and I ended the night with episode two of The Haunting of Hill House. I’m still firmly on board with this story.

And when I say “ended the night,” I mean extremely early. I was in bed by 9:30 (I’m usually a 1 am kind of person) because I had to get up around 4:00 am for an early flight to Atlanta for work. That’s right, while my wife is on the edge of labor, I'm going the length of the coast away. I’m playing the odds, here. I’ll only be gone for about 12 hours, but I’ll have my fingers crossed the whole time. Which will make it really it really hard to work.