There are things I appreciate about this series. The actors and actresses themselves certainly show potential, and I hope they continue to get work. The idea of combining individual Goosebumps stories but telling an overarching narrative was ambitious and, I think, works decently enough. (Though, I know others don't think it works at all.)
But it continues to be frustrating seeing how often the directors and scriptwriters have the characters doing things that just aren't believable. Take the cellphones, for example. In the first episode, the director clearly had the teens keep their cellphone screens on (presumably to illuminate their faces) when they were using their phones as flashlights, even though this made no sense from the characters' perspective (as it would then be harder to see anything in the dark). And then in this episode, two characters are texting each other while inside the same car, without turning off their sound! No one trying to hide their text conversation (like they claimed to be doing) would ever be that daft.
Too many choices are made clearly for the sake of the audience, but don't make sense from a character perspective. If the scriptwriters were trying to be as childish as the source material, that's not a hard bar to meet. But that's not going to earn the show decent ratings either. They honestly seem to be aiming for something in the 4- to 6-star range.
I just wish they aimed higher.
