After the classic Goosebumps show went off the air, and after a Tim Burton-produced movie was off the table, there was another attempt to keep R. L. Stine’s name on television. Two, if you count the stand-alone pilot for Ghosts of Fear Street in 1998. While The Nightmare Room did actually make it to air in 2001, it came and went with very little notice. Fast forward to ’07, and Cartoon Network announced the first-ever movie inspired by Stine’s work.
Make no mistake; The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It isn’t an adaptation. Stine gave his thoughts on Dan Angel and Billy Brown’s screenplay, but ultimately nothing from his literary anthology, The Haunting Hour, was used for Don’t Think About It, apart from the title. We wouldn’t see a proper adaptation until the series also called The Haunting Hour, and even that drew more inspiration from Stine’s other book called Nightmare Hour.
We can assume no one from the intended target audience cared if the movie was or wasn’t really based on Stine’s stories. They simply wanted to be scared, and Don’t Think About It does exactly that. It’s an experience well suited for youngsters who crave frights, but aren’t yet ready for the harder stuff. As Angel put it, the movie delivers a “safe place for kids to be afraid.”
Like a good chunk of Stine’s output, the main character in Don’t Think About It is the new kid in town. Emily Osment—yes, the sister of the boy who could see dead people—plays the slightly warped Cassie Keller, a Hot Topic goth drowning in a sea of Old Navy basics. Even though she would rather do anything else but take her scaredy-cat of a brother trick-or-treating, Cassie is doomed to spend her Halloween battling the Evil Thing.
It’s a bit of a wait before reaching the more horror-y parts of Don’t Think About It. In the meantime, you get to know Cassie, who’s quite surly to just about everyone except her crush. So, yes, the movie gives us a difficult protagonist, but at the same time, Cassie has a distinct personality. Unpleasant or not, she leaves an impression. Plus, that off-putting attitude of hers allows for minor yet decent character development later on.
Stine fans may have felt some déjà vu while watching this movie. It has strong notes of The Haunted Mask, that iconic Goosebumps story where another teen girl happens upon a creepy shop and then experiences the worst Halloween of her life. Here, Cassie encounters a hidden Halloween store, wherein she buys a book called “The Evil Thing”. The foreboding seller, by the way, is played by Tobin Bell, who at that point was very booked in the horror genre. He doesn’t have that many scenes in this movie, but Bell’s mere presence makes every one of them feel big.
Typically we’d expect the bully to pull a Carrie-esque prank on the outcast. Surprisingly, Don’t Think About It flipped the script by having Cassie do something gross and undue to get back at Priscilla (Brittany Elizabeth Curran), the school diva. Sure, Priscilla went out of her way to insult Cassie on her first day, yet filling a festive piñata with live cockroaches, the same one the Halloween Queen is due to hit, is excessive. By then you’re wondering who’s the real mean girl in this movie. Couple that roach stunt with the unwarranted disdain Cassie has for her little brother Max (Alex Winzenread), and we find ourselves growing weary of the main character.
Refreshingly, director Alex Zamm and the writers don’t let Cassie off the hook. She’s put on the receiving end of public humiliation after Priscilla and the boy she and Cassie both like, Sean (Cody Linley), enact their own prank. It’s after this tit-for-tat that Don’t Think About It finally starts to better resemble a horror movie, albeit one made for the TV-14 crowd. Childish antics preface that inevitable plot turn where someone foolishly reads aloud the words from a cursed book. Never a good idea!
The third act is elevated by special effects whiz Greg Nicotero and KNB EFX Group Inc’s creature design for the Evil Thing itself, a hellish, six-foot monster that collects humans as food for its soon-to-hatch offspring. This beastie’s teeth have teeth, and it can also split its one head into two. A handful of puppeteers were required to make the Evil Thing move and menace, and from what little we do see of it in action, the monster is impressive. Adults will admire the craftsmanship while younger viewers will cower.
As mentioned earlier, Cassie endures a fair deal of personal growth in such a short amount of time. This is after her run-in with the Evil Thing, and after she’s made to see the errors of her ways. The parents watching with their children would surely appreciate a story where the teenager learns to be nicer to their younger sibling. It’s some wholesomeness following a lot of potential nightmare fuel.
Now that we’re seeing what looks to be a surge of R. L. Stine-based media, you might be inclined to skip out on this movie, on account of it not being an adaptation. Technicalities aside, this is a solid movie for the right demographic.
Although Don’t Think About It is indeed gateway horror through and through, adults may also find themselves enjoying this youthful Halloween tale. It really captures the spirit of the holiday in a way that adult horror can’t always do.
