‘I Still See You’ supernatural thriller

‘Goosebumps 2’ essentially a live-action film

EBy Dennis Harvey

verybody sees dead people in “I Still See You”, a slickly produced but none-too-scary thriller designed for that teen audience which prefers that its spooky Halloween fare involve cute guys of variable mortality fawning around a mildly misfit quirky-girl protagonist. If that sounds kinda “Twilight”, you’ve got that right – the source material is a standalone novel by YA specialist Daniel Waters, whose “Generation Dead” series more or less substituted zombies for vampires in a similar supernatural teen romance saga.

Here, we have live boys and ghost boys alike fluttering around the suburban Goth flame of Bella Thorne in a movie that will no doubt play best to the book’s fans. Newcomers will find this adapted tale’s fantasy logic arbitrary, its plot convoluted, and the sum effect wildly unconvincing without being nearly so fun. Still, it’s given a suitably gauzy feel by director Scott Speer (“Midnight Sun”, “Step Up Revolution”) that will appeal to the target demo.

The premise is that a decade ago, an “energy wave” triggered by some murky government experiment gone wrong in Chicago killed a couple million people. That aside, its effects were minimal – with the exception that now the living can see “remnants”, specters of the deceased. They appear disconcertingly real, yet disappear after a few moments of repeating random old behavior on a short “loop.” These “projections of the past” aren’t sentient beings, have no physical substance, and can’t be interacted with. Still, they make “the whole world a haunted house.”

High schooler Veronica, aka Ronnie (Thorne), is actually reassured by the brief sight of her late, beloved father at the breakfast table each morning, though her mother (Amy Price-Francis) finds the phenom ghoulish. It’s considerably more worrying when Ronnie steps from the shower to be confronted by an unfamiliar ghost – a ripped youth (Thomas Elms) in tight Calvins and nothing else who writes “RUN” in the steam on her bathroom mirror. This breach in normal “rem” protocol prompts our heroine to befriend classmate Kirk (Richard Harmon), who’s considered weird for being “obsessed” with the apparitions.

Their sleuthing leads to the unpleasant suspicion that Ronnie may be getting stalked by a serial killer – living, dead, or somewhere in-between – whose prior victims were all born on her unusual birthday of Feb 29. Eventually they make an expedition into the “No-Go Zone” of the “Event’s” ghost-cluttered epicenter, where they encounter the scientist responsible for the disaster (Louis Herthum).

Also turning out to be key to the mystery is their teacher Mr Bittner (Dermot Mulroney), an overly chummy type who seems to routinely invite lone students over to his house – one of the more prosaic implausibilities (in this day and age) in a script that has quite a number of them. (Another whopper occurs when Ronnie, in acute distress, flees right past several neighbors’ houses without yelling for help, instead heading toward a dark wood where her pursuer can attack her in privacy.)

With its ghost-menace, handsome teacher, and even adoring dad (Shaun Benson) in flashbacks, much of “I Still See You” seems rigged to provide Ronnie with a full array of male suitors. (Given a Bettie Page-style black wig and emphatic makeup for the role, Thorne also looks awfully glam and mature for an alleged 16-year-old.)

Small

Director Speer has made something of a specialty of teen-friendly subjects on the big and small screen. His music-video roots grow a little too obvious at times here in images of princessy Gothicism (girls running slo-mo in diaphanous white gowns, etc.), not to mention a watery climax that’s part mermaid fantasy, part “What Lies Beneath” knockoff.

None of this will be very persuasive to those disinclined to buy into the general swooniness. Jason Fuchs’ screenplay piles on too much unconvincing explication late in the game, no doubt channeling elements that played better in the book. Though sequences like the “No-Go Zone” or an interrupted high school basketball game are impressively scaled, they tend to fall flat in suspense terms – maximizing tension and frights isn’t Speer’s strong suit. Decorous teen romanticism is more his thing. That does not extend, however, to getting particularly inspired work from his youthful leads. Still, with its wintry Midwestern setting (shot in Manitoba, actually) and decently moody, glossy design contributions, “I Still See You” has a certain snow-globe dark fairy tale allure that could resonate among younger viewers.

“Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween”

LOS ANGELES:

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, David Strathairn, Julian Feder and Julie Ann Emery are starring in the family drama “Walkaway Joe”, which has begun shooting in St John’s Parish, La.

Tom Wright is helming in his directorial debut from a script by Michael Milillo. “Walkaway Joe” is the story of

is a movie out of the “Just throw enough visual bric-a-brac at them!” school of proudly arrested kiddie entertainment. It’s like “Night at the Museum” remade as an overly caffeinated pop-up spook show. The story, what there is of it, is innocuous – it hinges on a teenage brother and sister, Internet-and-video-game geek Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor) and feisty romantic Sarah (Madison Iseman), each dealing with a problem (he’s fending off a bully out of the Nickelodeon Junior version of “Stand by Me”; she sneaks into a club and spies her boyfriend).

But that’s all just a way of killing time before Sonny and his buddy, Sam (Caleel Harris), meet Slappy, the mischievous talking ventriloquist dummy from the first “Goosebumps”. That movie, a jumbled riff on several of R.L. Stine’s children’s horror novels (there are literally hundreds of them, which is one reason why it’s the second-best-selling book series in history), came out three years ago and grossed $80 million. So who’s going to mess with a formula that seems to work more than not?

Slappy, with his dancing eyebrows and game-showhost grin, bears an amusing resemblance to Carson Daly and talks like a smart-aleck mad scientist. (I wish I could praise the voice actor by name, because he’s pretty good, but he’s not listed in the credits of either film. All as a way to add to the mystery!). Slappy is the movie’s designated agent of chaos, and there are times he makes “Goosebumps 2” play like the Disney version of a Chucky movie. But this is PG fluff. Slappy’s only desire is to be part of the family, and his one true purpose is to bring all the costume-shop ghoul kitsch to life.

“Goosebumps 2” is essentially a live-action film, but its principal production house is Sony Pictures Animation, because the movie is all about the rubber bats and the rubber rats, the green-lantern-headed witches and the rotting-bandage mummies, the doggie skeleton taking a pee, the familiar floppy Halloween masks that sprout bodies and start to walk, the humongous spider lawn ornament made entirely out of black and purple balloons that becomes the film’s equivalent of the “Ghostbusters” Stay Puft giant. The way a movie like “Goosebumps 2” works, even a weary adult will be grateful, by the time it finally kicks in, for all the brainless whirling distraction. I almost wrote fun, but that would be pushing it. To achieve that F-word, the film would have to ground its amusing effects in a story that was less skittery yet leaden. (RTRS)