Horror Novel Review: Bad Dreams by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1994, Bad Dreams is yet another R.L. Stine YA novel about life on Fear Street.

This time, it’s Maggie and her younger sister Andrea who have moved into a new house on Fear Street. Maggie and Andrea are rivals about almost everything. They’re both super competitive swimmers who are fighting for the right to represent their high school at the State Championship. They both like Justin, who is typical boring R.L. Stine boyfriend. They ever argue over who should get the ornate bed in Maggie’s new bedroom. Because Maggie agreed to let Andrea have the bigger room, Maggie gets to keep the bed.

I don’t know, Maggie. You might want to rethink that.

It turns out that the last owner of the bed was actually stabbed to death while laying on top of it. Soon, Maggie is having disturbing dreams where she sees the murder happening. Is Maggie being contacted from beyond the grave or are her dreams warning her that she’s about to become the next victim? And what about all the strange noises coming from the attic?

Soon, Maggie is struggling when it comes to school and swimming because she’s just not getting enough sleep! (This book made me happy that I’ve never needed more than 3 hours of sleep to function.) However, the other two girls who are competing against Maggie and Andrea for a chance to go to State each falls victim to a bizarre accident! Someone is taking out the competition! Is it the ghost? Is it Andrea? Could it even be Maggie herself!?

Will Maggie be able to solve the mystery? Will she eventually get a good night’s sleep and fulfil the promise of having sweet dreams? Will she and Andrea ever be able to put aside their sibling rivalry? And who will go to State!?

And, perhaps most importantly, does anyone really care?

As far as the plot is concerned, Bad Dreams is an example of R.L. Stine on autopilot. All of the questions are eventually answered but the answers seem to come out of nowhere and it’s hard to escape the feeling that Stine pretty much just kept writing until he reached the minimum word requirement and then he decided to quickly wrap things up without really worrying about whether or not he had provided enough clues to keep the reader from feeling as if she had been denied a fair chance to solve the mystery on her own. That said, the first of Maggie’s dreams was nicely creepy and the constant arguing between Maggie and Andrea was kind of entertaining. I’ve got three older sisters so I imagine that every single one of them could probably have related to Maggie at some point while we were all growing up. (It also helped that Andrea and Maggie had red hair, just like me!) Plus, all of the drama around the swim team reminded me of the later episodes of Saved By The Bell: The New Class, in which it suddenly turned out that everyone at Bayside was obsessed with the swim team. Today, books like this are best used for nostalgia and that’s what I definitely felt while reading Bad Dreams.

Horror Book Review: Wrong Number 2 by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The cover of Wrong Number 2 features two teenage girls huddled around a telephone and a blurb that reads, “Call waiting …. to kill!”

What does that even mean? “Call waiting …. to kill.” That would seem to suggest that there’s a person named Call in this book who is waiting to kill someone. I’ve read the book. There’s no one named Call. Alternatively, it could mean that we’ve got a Ring situation on our hands and actually answering the phone will lead to some sort of supernatural death curse. In that case, the call itself would be waiting to kill. But again, I’ve read the book. There’s nothing supernatural about it.

“Call waiting …. to kill?” It means nothing but let’s just be honest here. It’s kind of charming in its meaninglessness. It’s an R.L. Stine book, so it seems appropriate. You can’t expect these thing to make any sort of logical sense.

Wrong Number 2 is a sequel to Stine’s The Wrong Number. One year has passed since Deena and her friend Jade were nearly killed by the chainsaw-wielding Mr. Faberson. They’ve both managed to recover nicely from almost being killed. Deena is now dating an Australian exchange student. Jade is dating the star of the school’s basketball team. Deena’s half-brother Chuck (who is also Jade’s ex-boyfriend) is off at college but, unknown to the rest of his family, he’s planning on abandoning school so that he can move to Los Angeles and become a big time movie star. Everything seems to be just fine …. until Deena and Jade start getting mysterious phone calls from a man who says that he’s going to get revenge on them.

Could it be Mr. Faberson? He’s still in prison but apparently, he’s due to soon be released. Could it be Mr. Faberson’s former mistress, a real estate agent who is trying to fiind a buyer willing to overlook the fact that a murder that occurred there and buy Mr. Faberson’s old house? Or could it even be Chuck, who shows up in town and appears to be desperate to convince Jade to dump boring old Teddy and run away to California with him?

Reading the book, it was hard to avoid the feeling that Stine himself wasn’t really sure who he wanted the villain to be. Towards the end of the book, there are three different scenes that, taken on their own, could have served as an ending for Wrong Number 2. It’s as if Stine just kept tacking on possible endings and solutions until he finally found one that he felt worked. The end result is a book that feels somewhat slapdash, even by the lenient standards of R.L. Stine. If I had survived being attacked by chainsaw-wielding maniac and was now getting calls from someone claiming they were going to do the same thing to me again, I would perhaps be a bit more upset than either Deena or Jade seems to get. At the very least, I would consider changing my number or maybe moving to a different town. Not Deena and Jade, though. And hey, good for them. If nothing else, this incredibly silly book suggests that there’s not a single trauma that can’t be conquered by dating a basketball player. The cast of Hang Time would agree, I’m sure.

Here’s The Trailer For Fear Street!

Posted on June 9, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I will admit that I was a little bit concerned when I first heard about the upcoming Fear Street trilogy, just because the whole thing sounded a bit like American Horror Story and I was worried that the end result would be more Ryan Murphy-like than R.L. Stine-like. Even though Murphy wasn’t actually involved in the production of the film, American Horror Story, with its heavy-handed approach and it’s somewhat condescending attitude towards the genre, has influenced several recent horror films and series and very rarely has that influence been for the better.

However, I just watched the trailer for the Fear Street Trilogy and it looks pretty good. It looks like they captured the feel of Stine’s books while also thematically updating them a bit for the present age. It also looks like they avoided most of the overly cutesy stuff that often makes American Horror Story such a struggle to slog through. The trailer features plenty of scenes that will warm the heart of any regular reader of R.L. Stine’s. There’s Sunnyvale! There’s Shadyside! There’s a witch! There’s a dark and haunted night! There’s mayhem on a school bus! There’s a mall massacre! There’s a haunted camp! There’s a bloody murder! There’s teenagers in danger! There’s a man with an axe! There’s a landline phone!

Anyway, Fear Street is actually three connected films. Much like the Red Riding Trilogy, each film takes place in a different year but they share certain characters in common and they all add up to tell one big story. They were originally scheduled to come out last year but, like so many films, they were delayed by the pandemic lockdowns. (Ironically, they were delayed because they were originally meant for a theatrical release. However, the delay was so long that 20th Century Fox’s deal to distribute the films expired and they were then picked up by Netflix. So, even with the pandemic ending, the Fear Street Trilogy will still mostly be seen by people sitting in their living rooms. Seriously, just think about how much fun your lockdown would have been last year if you had three new R.L. Stine movies to watch. Sometimes, life is unfair.)

The three films will be released during the first three weeks of July, on Netflix! Here’s the trailer: