Chills & Thrills: Exploring the Enigmatic Allure of Goosebumps: The Vanishing

Gateway horror holds significant value, yet it’s currently facing challenges. The ’80s and ’90s experienced a golden era of child-friendly frights in literary form (Goosebumps), television (Are You Afraid Of The Dark?, Courage The Cowardly Dog), and cinema (Return To Oz, The Witches, The Secret Of NIMH), but nowadays, there are increasingly fewer horror projects being released each year. Fortunately, one major player from the ’90s has maintained the essence of the eerie season alive, with Rob Letterman not only directing a successful Goosebumps film in 2015 but also a rebooted television series that debuted in 2023. In its inaugural season, the show was a delightful horror-comedy that drew inspiration from R.L. Stine’s writings while narrating a serialized story, each episode referencing a distinct book while weaving a larger narrative together. This time, creators Letterman and Nicholas Stoller have concocted gateway horror that provides enjoyment whether you’re unfamiliar with Goosebumps or have absorbed every adaptation and can visualize each book’s cover from memory.

Goosebumps: The Vanishing exchanges its environment, cast, and source material, yet the structure remains unchanged. Much like the first season, The Vanishing begins 30 years prior, when a troubled teenager experiences a tragedy that resurfaces in the present to disturb a new group of children. Specifically, in 1994, a batch of teenagers disappeared mysteriously after undertaking a dare to spend the night at a haunted fortress. In 2024, siblings Devin (Sam McCarthy) and Cece (Jayden Bartels) are spending their summer with their overly cautious and botany-loving father Anthony (David Schwimmer), whose older sibling was one of the unfortunate youths from three decades ago. Alongside other teens from the neighborhood—Jen (Ana Ortiz), Alex (Francesca Noel), CJ (Elijah M. Cooper), Frankie (Galilea La Salvia), and Trey (Stony Blyden)—the twins quickly discover that their uneventful Brooklyn area of Gravesend is stranger and filled with monsters more than they ever imagined.

As an interpretation of classic Goosebumps tales, the new season effectively translates and modernizes the original fears. Though clearly limited by a television budget, the creature effects appear solid, featuring some well-timed jump scares and a healthy mix of frights and humor that even makes the more outrageous monsters (we’re looking at you, Blob) seem threatening. Each episode primarily centers on one of the main characters as they find themselves ensnared in a terrifying predicament while nurturing a season-long enigma regarding the disappearance of the teens in the ’90s. When focusing on the younger characters, they tend to be more archetypes and simplistic vessels through which haunted narratives are told, with most of the emotional weight they carry being overlooked almost as soon as the credits roll on their respective episode.

The prominent highlight of The Vanishing, however, is David Schwimmer’s Anthony. Similar to the first season of Goosebumps, these new episodes intertwine the narratives of the teenagers and their parents, with Anthony’s storyline swiftly becoming the most captivating among them. This primarily results from Schwimmer’s exceptional performance, which navigates a considerable amount of trauma as Anthony grapples with the loss of his brother while fixating on safety and control—especially as he begins to recognize that whatever transpired in 1994 is occurring once again—as well as whimsical and eerie elements. No, he doesn’t replicate the season one’s dance scene to “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers, but he does create a ruckus with every adult in the series by loudly discussing plants and bulbs.

Unexpectedly for a Disney+ show, every episode of Goosebumps: The Vanishing exceeds 40 minutes in duration. Yet, each one seems to lose momentum around that same 35-minute point, just before the narrative reaches its climax. This is unfortunate, as the writers manage to sustain the suspense in each episode, deftly blending the adaptations of Stine’s works while still crafting a serialized storyline. However, repeatedly, the concluding stretch tends to puncture a gripping cliffhanger by presenting a less effective one in its closing moments.

Setting that concern aside, Goosebumps: The Vanishing is indeed a delightful gateway-horror continuation of last year’s offerings, featuring an intriguing season-long narrative that serves as an enthralling adaptation of Welcome To Camp Nightmare. Even after over three decades, there appears to be ample energy remaining in Goosebumps‘ tank. 

Goosebumps: The Vanishing premieres January 10 on Disney+ and Hulu