This Goosebumps entry introduces a new type of location, summer camp. This is a location that will be revisited quite a bit throughout the series. In this review, we’ll find out if the camp gives nightmares.

Synopsis:

Billy is on his way to summer camp. The bus is filled with almost all boys. Billy thinks about his family sending him off to camp, which he isn’t the most excited about.

The camp is called Camp Nightmoon. Which for a creepy camp, maybe they should have gone with something a little less dark, maybe crystal lake.

Outside of Billy there are a few important characters to the story including Colin, Jay, Mike, Dawn, and Dori.

The bus suddenly stops, and the bus driver turns around, he’s become a monster, oh wait, he’s just wearing a mask. Cool. Everyone is then kicked off the bus by the driver. As they look around in the new setting, the kids realize they’re in the middle of nowhere.

Billy asks the bus driver if anyone is coming. The bus driver is unbothered and drives away.

This is when a bunch of creepy critters appear on the horizon. They come for the kids and start to try to attack the children. The kids are saved when a man fires off a rifle. It’s Uncle Al!

Uncle Al is the director of Camp Nightmoon. He then separates the boys and girls. Uncle Al drives them to camp. You may wonder why his first name is uncle, I don’t know the answer to this, but maybe Uncle Ruckus could help to give an explanation.

Billy realizes upon arriving to camp it looks normal, truly shocking. He is paired up with Mike, Colin, and Jay as bunkmates. They’re assigned to Larry as their counselor.

As they unload at their camp, Mike screams. There’re snakes in his bed, at least they aren’t in his boot. Mike is bitten by a snake, which causes Billy to ask if he’s been bitten. As a note, Billy sees blood coming out of Mike’s hand, but Billy is somehow unsure if Mike has been bitten.

Billy jumps into action and with help he is able to use the sheet on the bed to take the snakes outside. An actually smart Goosebumps protagonist? Only time will tell.

Mike goes to find a nurse, but plot twist, there is no nurse. Larry ends up giving Mike bandages, which are pretty useless, since Mike seems to be suffering pretty bad throughout the book.

The group of boys go to dinner. Uncle Al goes over the rules of camp. While most of them make sense he also tells the kids not to go to the forbidden bunk and that they never talk about it, but he’s talking about it. It seems like Uncle Al is almost encouraging the boys to check out the bunk, or it may be a plot device.

Uncle Al gets a bit carried away as he talks about children being attacked by bears and that bears attack children each year here. Thanks Al, now nobody’s going to feel like hearing a ghost story.

On the way back to their bunk Billy, Colin, Mike, and Jay make plans to go to the forbidden bunk. They decide to go the next night. Larry overhears them and says if they go, Sabre will get them.

Sabre may not be a printer company, but Sabre is a monster that haunts the forbidden bunk.

The next day Billy is having breakfast and comments about how normal everything is at camp, great, now you’ve jinxed the book.

Billy and other boys from his bunk and camp go out to play scratchball with Larry. At this point the twist starts to become apparent, since R. L. Stine is making up things that aren’t real and may be from an alternate universe or alien planet, like scratchball or prairie cats.

Mike is forced to play, despite being in extensive pain. The game is going pretty normal and played like a mix between baseball and kickball. Colin is running to a base when Larry decides aggravated assault is a good idea. He chucks the hard ball at the back of Colin’s head as hard as he can.

Colin is knocked unconscious. Larry freaks out and says the ball slipped. Yeah, when I accidentally drop a ball, I accidentally throw it really hard at someone’s head.

Larry has two unnamed campers help him carry Colin to the lodge to get checked out. Based upon the medical care I’ve seen so far; I think Colin has a 50/50 chance of making it.

The group of boys then go swimming. Mike comes along.

Later, Billy writes his parents a letter. During this, Billy tells Jay about Larry deliberately hitting Colin in the head. Jay, despite being there, doesn’t believe him, sure thing.

Colin returns after having seen Uncle Al, who checked him out and said he was fine. I think even Dr. Channard would be a better option before Uncle Al.

Colin, clearly suffering from a concussion must continue with summer camp instead of going to a real doctor. At the bunker, Mike is gone, forever.

At dinner Billy gets spilled on. He runs back to the bunker, only to discover all of Mike’s possessions are gone. If it were me, I would assume Uncle Al finally let him leave to see a real doctor.

After being confronted by Billy, Larry reveals he doesn’t know or care where Mike went, I guess one fewer witness for Larry.

Roger, another camper, has been fighting with Jay, when he drops the channel name Dead Meat while they argue. A food fight starts, which aren’t real and never happen, I would predict you’re more likely to get hit by lightning than to see a food fight.

Later that night, Jay and Roger are now friends. They plan to go to the forbidden bunk that night. Billy doesn’t want to go, so he stays at his bunk to keep an eye on Colin. Another smart protagonist choice, wow!

Late at night, Jay and Roger go to the forbidden bunk. Billy and Colin hear screams soon after. Jay comes back and says Roger has been ripped to shreds. Hardcore Mr. Stine. Jay passes out.

The boys hear a roar. Jay wakes up to scream that something is coming through the window, it’s Sabre. Nope, nothing happens.

The next day, the bunkmates realize Larry never came back last night. At camp they search for Roger, who can’t be found. None of the counselors believe their story either. So, they go swimming.

Billy sees Larry and asks about Roger. Larry says there was never a camper named Roger; I sense a cover up.

Billy goes to swim but is grabbed by someone in the bushes. It’s Dawn and Dori, both of whom have escaped the girl’s camp. They tell Billy that the other two girls have gone missing. Dori drops the book title, Camp Nightmare.

The girls want to make an alliance with the boys. They say they haven’t received any mail, which I don’t think is unusual, since it’s only been three days, and letters can be slow. Think about it, let’s say the mail is fast, three days for their letters to reach their parents, it would then be three more days to get a response letter, six days total.

Dawn and Dori also say they’ve heard screaming. Billy leaves.

Billy runs into Uncle Al. He tells Uncle Al he was trying to use the phones, turns out the phones are fake. Uncle Al says no phones are allowed, he’s gone full Karen, run!

Billy catches up with Colin and Jay. He tells them what happened. Colin and Jay tell him they’re going on a hike later in the day.

At lunchtime Billy learns he won’t be going on the hike and instead he’ll play tennis.

After tennis Billy goes to drop off his letter. He discovers that none of the letters have been sent.

At dinner Billy doesn’t see Jay or Colin. When he gets back to his bunk, he meets Tommy and Chris, both of whom get less than 10 lines in the whole book. They’ve just started camp and have been moved to Billy’s bunk.

The new campers tell Billy that Uncle Al has cancelled visitor’s day, which is the day Billy is supposed to leave. I think Billy can still leave, it’s not like Uncle Al has made a day disappear.

When Billy confronts Larry about Jay and Colin missing, he says he doesn’t know who those two people are and never heard of them.

The next day Billy goes on a canoe trip. During the trip Larry falls out of the canoe. Billy saves him and brings him to shore. However, Tommy and Chris are still on the canoe, and they disappear for the rest of the book.

Uncle Al shows up, and instead of being mad about two campers disappearing, he’s mad that he will have to buy a new canoe, at least he knows his priorities.

Billy is awoken early the next morning by Larry to go on a “special” hike. Every camper is being made to go on this hike. After breakfast, everyone follows Uncle Al.

Billy is about to escape when he sees Uncle Al holding a rifle. Uncle Al starts handing out rifles. He says they’re going to go after the girls and hunt them. I think I got the wrong Finding Dory movie, or in this case book.

Billy assumes Uncle Al is using bullets, but he’s actually using tranquilizers. He refuses to participate in Uncle Al’s hunt. Uncle Al tries to take Billy’s gun away, but Billy shoots him.

This is when Uncle Al tells Billy he’s passed. Turns out, everyone’s (I’m assuming) a paid actor. Billy’s parents show up to congratulate him. It also turns out that this place isn’t a summer camp, but a government lab.

While some child labor laws were likely violated and there’s no way these children are government scientists. Also, the acting must have been great to be so convincing.

All of this was set up to see if Billy was ready to go on an expedition to the distant planet Earth.

Review:

This is a pretty decent entry in the Goosebumps series. This entry isn’t perfect, though. First, my biggest issue is Billy doesn’t have any agency in the plot. He isn’t active throughout most it and usually things are just happening to him. It isn’t until after Jay and Colin leave that Billy starts being more actively involved in the plot, most of the time he’s just witnessing things happen and not moving the plot forward.

My other cons are related to some of the usual plot holes and ridiculousness, mainly being the letters, character choices, and Sabre. Sabre could have been more involved in the storyline, which would help with the twist. For example, with Roger, his supposed death helped to keep tension, and gave a more present danger than Uncle Al. Luckily the story still works well.

The ending is another mixed bag plot twist. It’s cool, but for me, going back to Sabre, I think they could have done more with the monster.

There are plenty of things that are good in this entry. There’s a protagonist who is brave, makes good choices, and doesn’t fall into the pitfalls of a lot of other main characters so far in the series. Larry works great as a minor antagonist. There’s plenty of Truman Show type vibes. The setting, plot, and pacing all work great. Overall, a very solid Goosebumps entry.

My rating: 8/10. Pretty good, pretty fun, and plenty of nightmares. This was a great entry in the Goosebumps series, and one of my favorites so far.

Twist ending:

It was a government lab test for Billy to go on a mission to a distant planet called Earth.

Memorable line:

“They come to the river to battle and drink.” I always knew bears were in a secret university fraternity.

Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc.

How was I to know the horror was just beginning? Stop jinxing the book, Billy. I like cliches just as much as the next person but come on.

Bad parenting:

Have fun at summer camp, child. Just kidding, it’s actually a government lab that’s going to gaslight you for a week.

Random references:

None. First Goosebumps book without a reference to something.

Tropes in book:

Character is 12, chicken, nobody believes a character’s crazy story, twist ending, crazy cliffhangers, and camper jump scare.

TV tie-in:

The Goosebumps episode of Welcome to Camp Nightmare is almost as good as the book. There are a few changes I think aren’t so good and a few that are good.

The changes I’m not a fan of are the half-baked Sabre in this episode, where it’s a robot, not an actual monster, and now there’s a scientist guy riding around on it, kind of lame. A lot of the plot does get scrapped despite being a double length episode. First, Billy never gets new bunkmates, they take some characters out, the canoe trip never happens and is changed, the hike never happens, tennis never happens, and some of the disappearances and how things happen are changed. The disappearances aren’t as good, since fewer of them make sense, or aren’t realistic. For example, a canoe tips over with Colin and Jay in it, somehow, they disappear almost immediately.

There are a few things improved on. Sabre is actually in it and not just made up, the plot remains the same at its core, the ending is better explained and makes a bit more sense, and the story is told in a bit more straightforward manner.

The acting isn’t too bad for a Goosebumps episode, but there are some unintentionally funny moments. They change rifles to crossbows for the episode, which makes sense. Also, somehow the people are able to see Earth from the sky, so I don’t know how this planet can be so close without people on Earth seeing this planet.

Overall, I’ll give this episode of Goosebumps a 6/10, maybe 6.5/10 (first half point alert). Not too bad, just a downgrade from the book.

Memorable episode line:

“Girls.” Uncle Al’s voice cracks in the middle of the word. Unintentionally hilarious as a 40 to 50 or so year-old man hits puberty mid-episode.

Famous Cast:

Kaj-Erik Eriksen, star of the episode who was also a main cast member in The Commish and is still acting. Also, at least 4 years older than the character he portrays in this book when this was filmed.

Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.

To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-8-the-girl-who-cried-monster/