R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps and Fear Street novels were a staple of every childhood in the past decade. Their screen adaptations will never get tired, no matter how many times they are done. While watching Goosebumps, the beginning may have felt predictable, but the rest of the narrative was as unexpected and thrilling as you would want from a Goosebumps story. However, we have to admit that the goosebumps-inducing quality was limited to the revelation of the horror and not how it unfolded. Either way, the evil attacking the teens is still testing its roots, and it has a lot to do before it proceeds to consume their lives. So, let us look at the recap of Goosebumps Part 1, to see how it starts.
Spoiler Alert
How does the camera affect Isaiah’s game?
When Isaiah finds the camera in the Biddle House, it is just another harmless artifact that is akin to a forgotten treasure. However, he discovers that it is more than that. In school the next day, Nathan Bratt hands him over his backpack, which has the photographs Isaiah took at the party, along with the camera. Except that the photos are different from what he took. He understands that they may be telling of the future when Allison’s photo is of when she was lying scared in the forest, and Margot’s photo is of her choking near the vending machine. The latter situation happens soon when Margot accidentally eats a chocolate bar with nuts in it, and Isaiah has to save her by administering the dose from her EpiPen. That is enough for him to understand that the camera tells, or perhaps creates, a bleak future for the subjects of its photographs.
Whenever Isaiah tries to show someone the photos, they go blank all of a sudden, and that is why nobody believes him. One of the photographs from the camera shows Isaiah with an injury during his game the next day, and Isaiah decides that if he destroys the camera, it won’t be able to work against him. With that deed behind him, he goes on to play the match the next day, and it is going well until Isaiah sees the camera in his locker room, making him anxious and thereby losing his focus in the game. As expected, he hallucinates on the field, leading to his accident and an injury that would take him months to recover from. Some of the other parents, namely Nora (Lucas’ mom), also see Harold Biddle on the field, but when she tries to tell Ben and the others about it, they decide to ignore her. But Nora doesn’t give up, and she gives Margot a photograph of Harold to give to Isaiah and check whether that is the boy he had seen on the field. Isaiah recognizes him, and that is the clue for the rest of their investigation, since the camera is lost and they cannot find it anywhere. It could be wreaking havoc, or it has finished its job and is back to where it initially was.
Why does Isabella become a troll?
Honestly, every teenager has their own set of insecurities and struggles, and they are all a natural part of growing up. Isabella’s struggle is that she feels invisible. The frustration makes her act like a troll online and vent her anger on people that she feels ignore her. At the party, Isabella stumbled into the basement and found a mask that compelled her to take it home. Isabella does so and finds that the mask is taking over. It makes her say very mean things to her school guidance counselor and Lucas when the latter breaks her drone. Isabella wears the mask and turns into an actual troll that attacks Lucas, who is saved by Margot and Isaiah. Isabella is only able to fight off the mask when she is about to harm her little brother, and her inner self stops her from doing so. She and her brother throw the mask into the pool, but unknown to them, it is fished out by a possessed Nathan Bratt.
Are all of James’ clones dead?
On the night of the party, James hit his head on the clock, and since then, he has been stuck in a time loop that doesn’t let him leave the party. He eventually figures out how to use that to his advantage and is able to approach his crush. He gets out of the loop by stopping the clock itself, but life is a lot more complicated for him since every time he tried to leave the loop, he creates a clone of himself, and right now, there are numerous clones, all of whom want to take over his life. James is bound and held captive somewhere while the clones live his life. They break up with his boyfriend and pick a fight with his friends, but luckily, Isabella shows Margot and Isaiah that this is the fake James, and they now have to find the real one.
The three kids follow one of the fake James to an abandoned place, and after a long and gooey fight, they are able to take down the clones and get James free. We are not sure whether all the clones are dead, but one of them takes a suitcase to Nathan, who is enraged at finding it empty. He expected to find the remains of someone in it, but now that it is not there, he is back to targeting the kids.
Why does Lucas try to risk his life?
Lucas’ father died while trying to do a dangerous stunt, and since then, the boy has made it his mission to complete what his father couldn’t. That is why he keeps getting into trouble at school with dangerous antics, because he sees them as training for what he needs to do. Nathan Bratt targets him through the worms that Lucas picked up at the Biddle House during the party. Lucas eats a worm just for the sake of it, not knowing that this is going to jeopardize his entire life. That night, the worms take over him, and the next day, he rides his motorcycle off the roof in a dangerous display.
Margot understands that Lucas is being controlled by the worms since the group of friends has understood that every problem so far has its origin in something from the Biddle basement. Only Nora can help solve this problem, and as Lucas is ready to drive off the cliff, Nora tells him the truth: his father did not die due to a failed stunt. He knew he was not going to be able to complete it, and he had taken it up as a suicide mission. As soon as Lucas learns about it, he vomits all the worms since he no longer needs their support to carry out a mindless task. But the worms don’t want to let go of him, and that ends up in a long chase, which results in the worm monster getting destroyed by a wood chipper. But it also ends with Nora in a psychiatric facility since she doesn’t make an excuse and starts talking about ghosts and monsters.
Is Margot Back From The Scrapbook?
The kids have figured out that their parents probably know about the story behind everything that is going on. But since none of them is ready to answer, their last resort is Sarah, who is Margot’s mother. Sarah is separated from her family, and in her absence, Colin has been having an affair with Nora. Since Nora is now in a mental health facility, Lucas is living with them, and it is awkward overall, not just for the parents but also for the kids since Isaiah has broken up with Allison and realized his feelings for Margot, but she has already moved forward with Lucas.
When Sarah comes to know that Nora and Colin are together, she immediately meets Nora in the facility and advises her not to take the medicines being given to her. We are unsure about Sarah’s motivations, especially since Margot has not said anything favorable about her so far, and the timing of Sarah’s advice is also very off. But Nora listens to her, and we think that she is going to be in a lot more trouble than before.
As for the kids, Nathan intervenes again, and he hands a scrapbook to Margot, saying that he found it in his basement and that it had Sarah’s picture in it. When Margot opens the book, she is transported to the events recorded in the book in that particular place. She finds that Sarah and Harold knew each other and were probably good friends. She calls over her friends and wants to explore more of the scrapbook. In the auditorium, she finds that Harold had told Sarah that he was in danger, and Sarah had refused to listen to him. That is when it changes from memory since Harold talks directly to Margot and drags her to his house in the memory. The friends figure out what is happening from the pages of the book, and to rescue Margot, they take her to the Biddle House and enter the scrapbook themselves.
Margot is being led by Harold, and she sees what we saw at the beginning of Goosebumps. He goes down to his basement and is startled by something, which ends up causing the fire that consumes the house. Margot is taken out of the house just in time by her friends, and they witness the younger version of their parents walking out with a suitcase and making a decision to let Harold burn in the house. During Goosebumps‘ ending, as the kids grapple with the revelation that their parents might be murderers, Nathan Bratt comes out and invites them into the house to show them the real truth of that day. They are all still in the scrapbook, and they are going to find the truth.
Final Thoughts
In Goosebumps, we know that R.L. Stine made it a point never to give anyone a happy ending. That distinctly makes us think that Harold Biddle cannot purely be the victim. He has to be the villain in some measure, and we have to wait to find out how that is.
