Goosebumps 2: A Haunted Halloween

        A sequel to the first Goosebumps movie, A Haunted Halloween is about 2 friends who accidentally bring to life a possessed doll whose only desire is to make Halloween permanent and terrorize the citizens of the world into his dominance. They are aided by the older sister and set out to stop...Slappy...that's his name.     
       Look, I hadn't used my Moviepass in about a month so me and my two sisters, one of them who also has a subscription, were lured into seeing this movie on a motivation that is best described by two words, "f*** it." You know, what you usually tell yourself when you're about to do something stupid. The girl in the ticket booth was not surprised by our choices that evening and I made a little joke about how we three adults were seeing a movie of this type. We got our concessions and headed to the auditorium. Much to my amusement, the theater had only adults who were probably there on the same motivation that had driven me and my sisters. I really wasn't expecting much. I knew that the first movie did fairly decent with critics and audiences and this one did not. Does it deserve the low score? Sure, but there's more.
       One critic described the movie as something to put on in the background of a kids Halloween party and that couldn't be truer, but if I'm being honest I did enjoy the movie to an extent. You can tell that its targeted audience is kids and kids will no doubt have a good time. As an adult, seeing this movie ironically, I say that going in with a certain mindset will garner you some entertainment, but its quality never reaches farther than that. Everything about this movie is executed in a fashion of the highest mundanity, but whose to say that that can't be entertaining.
       The one big problem this movie has, in my opinion, was its expectations towards the audience. Many plot points and crucial details are merely glanced over and are never given an explanation because the movie expects you to have already seen the first one. For me, as someone who has never seen the first movie, I was very confused at quite a few parts in the movie. From what I can gather, this sequel is tamer than the first movie. The only way I can describe that is by comparing it to another movie duology: Alice in Wonderland. The first movie has Alice remembering her past with the other world and her becoming the chosen one. She fights in a war at the end and slices the Jabberwawki's head off. It's quite an epic story despite the movie itself being somewhat problematic. The sequel, however, comes nowhere near the level of grandiose the first had achieved. Goosebumps 2 feels like Alice in Wonderland 2. Also, Jack Black gets no more than 5 minutes of screen time! I wanted more.
       Other than that, it's a perfectly enjoyable film if you have nothing else to do or you want to put something on in the background at a Halloween party. I would suggest you put something else on, however, because I can't imagine the stares you'll get when you suggest this movie. 5/10