Goosebumps - One Day at Horrorland Part 1 & 2 1998 Horror Movie Review

One of the creepiest Goosebumps episodes, the tale of a family who gets lost trying to find a zoo and ends up at a very unusual (and deadly) amusement park instead. The eerie quietness of the sparsely inhabited park makes it seem chillingly realistic, and some of the things that happen to the kids and their parents are pretty bizarre. Lizzie is almost crushed to death when the walls of the house of mirrors close in on her, Luke has a close encounter with a hairy tarantula, the family encounters a monster carrying the talking head of a teenage girl in one hand, and the father almost faints when he discovers that the monsters are actually real. Details are well thought-out too, showing the remnants of families who weren’t so lucky, as we see glasses, dentures, strollers, picnic baskets, and a totaled car strewn throughout the park. Also adding to the creepiness is the fact that the Morris family’s own car is a beat-up, 1980-ish Chevrolet station wagon that looks like it is going to collapse at any moment, and it almost doesn’t start when they are fleeing the park. And, finally, in a scary departure from the usual standard of family entertainment, there is no happy ending. One of the monsters attaches a device to the car that allows him to control the steering, and he uses this to send the car teetering over a cliff, which is the last thing we see, leaving us wondering whether they plunge to their deaths or are somehow miraculously rescued.