It's surprising that it's taken this long for R.L. Stine's Goosebumps to make it to the big screen, but at last someone found an inventive way to pull it off. The first trailer for the upcoming film has arrived, featuring Jack Black in the meta-role of Stine himself, whose novel creations come to life and wreak havoc on a group of teens.

Months ago, we got our first look at the monsters of Goosebumps, which feature a blend of classic and more contemporary Stine creations, like the Mummy, Slappy the Dummy and the executioner from A Night at Terror Tower. Those creations all appeared to be done with practical effects and retro-style masks, giving Goosebumps a really distinctive feel — but the trailer leans more heavily on CG, so it would seem that those practical effects will be aided/covered up by computer generated FX.

At any rate, the film looks both fun and funny, with an original story by Big Eyes writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and a script by Darren Lemke. Rob Letterman (Monsters vs. Aliens) directed the film, which also stars Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush, Amy Ryan, Jillian Bell and Ken Marino.

Upset about moving from a big city to a small town, teenager Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) finds a silver lining when he meets the beautiful girl, Hannah (Odeya Rush), living right next door.  But every silver lining has a cloud, and Zach’s comes when he learns that Hannah has a mysterious dad who is revealed to be R. L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of the bestselling Goosebumps series.  It turns out that there is a reason why Stine is so strange… he is a prisoner of his own imagination – the monsters that his books made famous are real, and Stine protects his readers by keeping them locked up in their books.  When Zach unintentionally unleashes the monsters from their manuscripts and they begin to terrorize the town, it’s suddenly up to Stine, Zach, and Hannah to get all of them back in the books where they belong.

Goosebumps has an excellent cast and a great hook, but we'll see how all this monster madness shakes out when the film hits theaters on October 16.

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