If you were a kid who grew up around the turn of the millennium, chances are your initial introduction to horror was through one of three ways: Reading R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps children’s books and watching the television series that aired on Fox Kids, watching Are You Afraid of the Dark? on Nickelodeon, or staying up late to watch episodes of Tales from the Crypt on HBO.
If you fit into the first category, I have some great news: Goosebumps is coming back with an all-new series premiering on Disney Plus and Hulu this October.
Rather than being a straightforward anthology horror series, this new incarnation of Goosebumps seems to be taking a page from the 2015 comedy horror film starring Jack Black, centering on five teenagers who must work together to recapture a swath of malevolent supernatural forces they inadvertently unleashed while diving into the buried past of their parent’s own unusual adolescence.
Don’t count on their being much in the way of laughs, however; the short announcement date teaser for the series seems to really emphasize the “horror” aspect of the series’ comedy-horror origins, featuring an host of spine-chilling scenes including a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of Slappy, the iconic possessed ventriloquist doll from the classic Goosebumps book Night of the Living Dummy.
Goosebumps premieres Oct. 13 on Hulu and Disney Plus.