Goosebumps The Vanishing: Let’s start off by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

Ok firstly before we go any further I thought I should mention a few things,

Firstly, I’ve never grown up on Goosebumps nor have I watched any of the Goosebumps original series.

Secondly, I’ve never read any Goosebumps books, matter of fact I grew up with Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, which was my childhood trauma.

It’s probably a shame I didn’t grow up on Goosebumps or Are You Afraid Of The Dark? But I did eventually down the line get into Are You Afraid Of The Dark? But idk I just couldn’t get into Goosebumps. Minus that 2015 film because I did enjoy that film.

Thirdly, since I’ve never read a Goosebumps book or watched any of the original series, I’m coming into this season with an open mind without having anything to compare it to.

Except for that 2023 Goosebumps series, that’s what I’ll compare this one to. Spoilers this 2025 series The Vanishing is leaps better than the 2023 Goosebumps show.

The reason for that is I wasn’t a fan of the direction Goosebumps 2023 went in, the show felt more like a Y-A drama novel. At no point did I feel I was watching Goosebumps, at times it felt more like I was watching 13 Reasons Why.

That’s not the type of vibe u should be having for Goosebumps.

Yeah, they didn’t get the tone correct for Goosebumps, unlike the 2025 season where they nailed that tone.

Also personally I’m getting sick and tired of the iconic character Slappy.

So when the 2023 show brought him in the last 2 episodes I just rolled my eyes and groaned. I was like seriously can we not do anything different? Ur Goosebumps! U got a vast collection of different monsters u could use. I mean before this show we had Slappy be in the 2 Goosebumps film.

So maybe now u can see why I’m getting tired of him, what I like about this 2025 Goosebumps show is well spoilers, the monster this time around is an alien spore parasite.

Now granted there’s a Caviot, this show does rip off a concept that’s been done before. The whole concept here is these alien spores kidnap people, and put them in pods to rest. Then make carbon copies of the person to take their spot.

Hmmmmmm doesn’t that seem vaguely familiar? Also besides that another reason, I prefer this second season over season 1 is because of the fact they got that actor (David Schwimmer) from the hit show Friends to be in this show.

Look I’ve never watched the show Friends, but I have seen clips and I actually like his character. So I was happy to see him go from a comedy lead role to a horror lead role.

I will say my only gripe with this show is some of the creepy moments are ruined with wonky CGI, take that as u will. Either they didn’t have a high budget or didn’t give the animators enough time. But still, so overall I’ll give Goosebumps The Vanishing a solid 9/10.

Warning spoilers ahead y’all been warned.

So this show kicks off with this teenage boy named Matty and his friends heading into this place called Camp Nightmare. It’s in this closed odd area near a sewer plant, anyways they go inside to spend the night on a dare, rumor has it ghosts haunt this place yada yada stuff like that.

BTW someone snuck in behind them, it’s the tennis younger brother who’s nicknamed Stink, his older brother takes him out because hai mom will kill him. If anything happens to Stink.

So then the teens stand around a circle in the floor that opens, and just then these black particles come out of it. As soon as they wonder what just happened, they look over at the teen boy and they see black ooze come out of his eyes and the screen cuts away as his face turns into a black ooze skeleton.

Dunn dunn dunn, so now we cut to the modern day where this teenage girl and boy named Cece Brewer and Devin Brewer move to Chicago for the summer to stay with their dad who’s name is Anthony Brewer played by David Schwimmer, spoilers we find out he’s that character Stink. Yeah, that boy in the beginning that died was Anthony Brewer’s brother.

So he picks them up and takes them home, here we find out these few things

The 2 kids aren’t to go down in the basement because he has shelves of plants down there, he’s a botanist. He’s studying plants.

A female cop named Jen, stops by and gives Anthony his dead brother’s clothing that’s been in forensic cabinets. That’s how we find out he easily that kid nicknamed Stink.

We get introduced to a few characters named

Alex (who got out of juvie because she was caught burning a house down, her mom Jen who’s a cop didn’t really help her out in her opinion, so now she’s stuck with a brace around her ankle and do community service)

Frankie (this girl that Devin has a crush on, they were long-time friends but he’s been keeping up with her on her TikTok)

Trey (her jerk of a boyfriend, u will see why later. But his jerkiness shows up when he meets Devin and gets jealous of him because he too has a crush on his girlfriend)

CJ (this Goofy teen who works as a delivery boy for a little café, his quirk is he eats a bit of the food he delivers before delivering it, oh boy)

Anyways CJ challenges Devin to go with them to the haunted place and for him to enter the sewer and take pics to prove he’s not a chicken. Oh, when they get there and Devin goes on down, while Trey hears Cece mention that Frankie was Devin’s first crush.

He gets jealous and goes to the fuse box and destroys it to turn off the power In the tunnels, yeah what a shithead.

Oh, and Devin gets infected by the black particles when the circle opens, so they find him with black ooze coming out of his eyes.

Eh doesn’t matter for now don’t worry he’s alright for now but he has to go with Anthony to visit he’s mother who’s in a nursing home because she has dementia. While Cece gods and does her shtick which is protesting, so I’m gonna give bulletin points to summarize tons of stuff so we don’t spend too long and talk about this too long.

His mother still thinks Matty is alive but just missing.

Later on, while Anthony is in his basement studying the clothing from his brother, he notices black particles on it which all of a sudden spawns our leaves that grab ahold of him, then tries to yank him upstairs to infect his son Devin.

But Devin runs outside so the plant extends through the sewer, grabs Devin, and infects him.

Then the plant goes back up to the basement and goes inside Anthony’s arm, where we get to see in slight gruesome imagery of worm things wiggling out his arm and him cutting into his arm to yank it out.

In his arm he finds a plant pod which he yanks out and puts under a jar to study, he eventually finds out it eats meat when he goes to a pet store and brings back a dead mouse to test what the plant eats. Then he puts the pod in a refrigerator that’s down in the basement as well.

Anyways he might have found a new plant so he reports it to a friend in the botanist community who says send a sample to me, u might have stumbled into something new.

Frankie breaks up with Trey while he’s at his job as a car repair man, his day gets worse when he gets home and tries to park his car. Anthony comes out with a shovel and smashes Trey’s window so he can move.

For u see he’s been parking in this spot even when Anthony says no, so he’s giving him a reason to stop, so he moves the car, I do like the reaction when Trey says are u out of ur mind? Which Anthony says that’s a distinct possibility.

Lolo, anyway so Trey tries to get revenge that night by sneaking into Anthony’s basement to destroy some of his plants while Frankie stands and watches by.

Again what a shithead, luckily while he’s down there destroying things, the pod that got locked in a fridge does open up and yanks Trey inside leaving his coat inside, womp womp so now Trey is missing and so is the pod.

So this leads to Anthony reporting Trey who’s missing and his missing pod to Jen, so she’s gonna investigate this because she’s a cop. Btw Trey does return via a form of a fleshy plant blob in the form of a human. He goes to see Frankie at his car job.

Both she and Devin kill him by smashing him with a car, btw Trey ends up possessing this car which later on Alex uses to ride off to go find this guy who was with her while the house burnt down.

To force him to admit it was his fault and she was framed because that is the truth, so she demands Cece to get into the car and help her, as soon as they find him and after she explains to Cece the whole truth before she calls the cops, the car starts speeding up to catch him.

This scares Cece to the point she leaves and no longer trusts Alex, I mean fair but also that’s sad because no one believes her. Don’t worry save this for later this will bite Cece in the butt in a bit.

Later on, Alex returns Cece’s mug to her which she drinks kombucha out of, and then Cece heads to a job interview she has. Unfortunately, she drank out of the cup which was infected so during the interview she started burping then a black ooze came out of her nose.

She then somehow appears back home without knowing how, so she calls up her brother. So her brother and Frankie meet her at a subway where Cece admits she never told her brother that she never got into college because she didn’t want to see the look on his face of empathy.

Now that’s sad, also Cece expresses her concerns that Dad might be behind all these weird stuff happening, and that is why Devin didn’t tell her about being dragged into the sewer by some plants. Devin doesn’t believe their dad is behind all this.

Moving on so we got a possessed car that Trey owned, a missing Trey, and a missing pod that was new. Luckily or unluckily Anthony does locate the real Trey who’s naked and in the tunnels when Anthony goes to investigate it because he’s trying to investigate the area.

So he takes Trey to a hospital where Trey goes comatose because he’s in shock. Now he can’t speak at all. Uh oh, bad tiling because Jen and Anthony have questions for him. Well, mainly Jen does because she’s a cop.

After they leave, this random Indian woman shows up. She then is caught leaving through the back door by CJ, he asks for help and she says I don’t work here. Well, that’s suspicious since she entered Trey’s room with a nurse coat on.

BTW forgot to mention we found out Jen used to be Matty’s girlfriend and a friend of Anthony. So she was there that night when his brother died, what a twist.

Also, Anthony is slightly annoyed at Jen for not fully investigating his brother’s disappearance, anyways moving on so uh remember how I mentioned Cece will regret being rude to Alex earlier? Well, when they ask Alex for help and to join them she refuses because and I quote, I told u the truth the other day and u didn’t believe me.

Ouch, anyway things get worse, for u see Anthony goes back down to the tunnels and gets infected again, so this time the plant pod has fully infected him, he comes down with a cold and his eyeball accidentally pops out of its socket. Yikes and starts to dangle off a thread.

BTW this scene is supposed to be gross and scary but I couldn’t take it seriously because of the wonky CGI, that’s what I meant earlier in my negative category.

Oh don’t worry CJ witnesses this when he drops off soup for him, he runs back to his job and tries to bring his boss to Anthony’s house but Anthony appears all healthy and fine. So CJ gets fired, Anthony calls him over so he can explain everything.

Instead, Anthony ties up CJ in his basement and tries to infect him with the parasite, ok that’s not Anthony.

Luckily for CJ the gang comes in and whacks Anthony in the head which knocks his head onto the floor, they leave and when they leave that old Indian woman enters the room and takes Anthony’s body away to a laboratory where she starts melting the rest of his limbs.

Because he just had to poke around that tunnel, she tried to prevent people from entering and Anthony and his family just couldn’t leave it alone, I mean fair. She’s not wrong.

But she joins them when the gang finds a VHS tape that Jen brought over to Anthony, it’s a VHS tape that she tried hiding for ages. Why u may ask?

Well it is a VHS tape documenting the things she and Matty and his friends did, some things Jen might have said that she didn’t want publicity known like saying I hope so and so dies and rots.

The tape ends when Matty dies btw, oh if any y’all wondering is Anthony OK? Then where is he? Well yes, he’s OK well kinda, he’s alive but he’s cocooned in a pod along with the missing people who got taken away.

Where are these pods? In that hole in the ground in the sewer facility.

Oh also Trey wakes up and joins the gang, he now wants to be a better person because a near-death experience puts things in perspective. So he apologizes to Devin, and they start becoming bros.

Oh also Cece and Alex kiss each other expressing there love for each other, awww that’s cute I love that.

So the gang has to go rescue Anthony but first, they go investigate that mysterious woman. They find her lavatory where they find out that she was a part of an organization that her dad created to study the unknown and document them.

Plus keep it out of the public, a group of scientists. They kept an eye on this hole which had an alien spaceship in it, they studied it and eventually, it got dangerous to the point it infected the group.

So the woman’s dad helped her escape while he stayed behind for the greater good, as in he got infected and as the door shut she witnessed her father starting to have black ooze come out of his eyes.

So she spent years preventing anyone from going there, hence why she’s unhappy that Anthony and his brother snooped around there.

Anyway she comes into the room, and the gang asks her for help to get their dad back. She says she’ll help, so she takes them to the hole and injects them with a serum that will only last 1 hour but will prevent them from getting infected.

She gives them one to inject their dad with, when they get down the hole she locks them inside because wow what a shocker the insane woman doing g something insane.

So they find their dad, and they inject him. He’s not free but now they have to find a way out.

They have a plan that involves using this tube that injects the ship with some kinda chemical that holds the ship at bay, a method that the woman’s father used all those years ago.

Maybe that will open the hole. So Anthony suits up and tries it out, it ends up working so they run towards the ladder but the dad hast to stand there and have the machine running to keep the hatch from closing.

As the gang gets up the ladder guess who shows up beneath them? Matty and his missing friends, yeah somehow Anthony rescues them off-screen.

He says I couldn’t just leave them behind, so they all climb up the ladder and the day is saved. Wow, what a happy ending I’m glad everything turned out so- wait what’s that? There’s more? Huh? Well ok, I was just told by myself that there’s more and this isn’t the end of the story.

U would think this is where it should end, but this is Goosebumps. Something bad had to happen, which in this case it does. For u see while the kids are tasked to watch an eye on Matty and his friends, while Anthony and Jen go find that woman.

BTW Jen discovers Matty and his friends are alive and she’s mortified, she’s like these kids are missing and yet here they are and not aged a bit.

This isn’t normal, yeah I do agree with her on that, so they find the mysterious woman. Where they locate her with her comatose dad just staring at her.

They figure out she hasn’t been trying to keep the alien pod at bay this whole time, she’s been trying to revive her father. Which she says I can’t do this alone, wow selfish selfish selfish.

Oh, but it gets worse, he starts talking and says “This isn’t me” Then he pukes up a pod then he falls on the ground, and transforms into a Demegorgan-type creature.

Uh oh, so they realize oh wait if he transformed into that then that means, the kids are in danger. We then see Matty and his friends who are out with the kids on a walk saying This isn’t me.

Then they transform into that creature, and the gang gets cornered outside on the street, when Anthony and Jen make it there the kids are missing. Is it too late?

Nope, there’s still time, so they head back to the alien ship which Anthony has a plan to let the ship go back to space where it clearly wants to go.

Hoping this will release his 2 kids and their friends from their pods. So he uses the panels and pushes buttons which causes the hole to open then the ship heads up into the atmosphere.

Before the ship takes off into space, Matty and his friends say bye to Anthony for good, he tells them this time u can’t join us. Ur, home is with Cece and Devin. He then sees Matty and the missing people head into a bright light (presumably heaven).

So anyway the ray is saved, and the show ends with our main characters relaxing on the porch and saying goodbye because Anthony is gonna drive Devin and Cece back home.

They both say bye to their new lovers, also CJ and Trey get to say bye to them as well, they both get into the car and drive off with Devin. We then see him try closing the street to his house on his balcony.

As he stands there and starts vomiting up a pod, uh oh. Which he says oh no this isn’t good.

Yeah, no shit this isn’t good, also what kinda Stranger Things type ending is this? Lolo, this feels straight out of Stranger Things.

Trey is basically Will Byers! Anyway the end, I hope y’all enjoyed the review, and remember to stay safe out there, if any of y’all live in Pittsburgh it’s gonna be slippery since it’s snowing constantly, and to anyone who’s reading this who’s in LA, plz stay safe.

BTW here’s a tease on the next review that’s being posted.