The Disney+ Goosebumps show has to be one of this year's biggest surprises. As a reimagining of R.L. Stine's best-selling book series, it offers more than just modernized versions of old stories. Rather, Goosebumps leans into the darker aspects of its clever plot, with frights that are bolstered by its talented cast and decent special/practical effects in a manner that could potentially elicit the titular fear response from its target audience.

This variation of Goosebumps isn't like the horror anthology series that ran for four seasons back in 1995. It's actually more akin to the Jack Black films directed by Rob Letterman, in that it has a central plot that pulls in elements from some of the most popular books in the series. The difference here is that Letterman and Nicholas Stoller were allowed to produce a more mature showing--one that allows for swearing, body horror, and an unsettling new way of compiling the tales of cursed items and monstrous entities into one cohesive story. The result is a shockingly spooky experience for new and old Goosebumps fans alike, at least in the first five episodes of this 10-episode season that we were able to watch.

Goosebumps doesn't shy away from some of the weighty themes one might find in other horror based-media. The destructive nature of adultery, harrowing details of a murder, or the shocking implications of a potential suicide aren't typically featured in Stine's books. They live here though, mostly as a means of terrorizing the lives of five teens who accidentally stumble onto the remnants of a long-kept secret. Now haunted by a vengeful spirit--an effect of throwing a misguided Halloween party in a recently refurbished house filled with items one shouldn't touch, let alone take home--they'll need to work together if they hope to survive the coming days.