YMMV / Goosebumps (2023)

• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The other parents straddled the line when they threatened to have Lucas taken from Nora's custody if she kept pushing the issue regarding Biddle, but then Isabella's mom firmly crosses it when she has Nora kept heavily drugged and barely aware of what's going on when she gets committed.
  • Slappy crosses it in the backstory when he poisons Harold Biddle's mind against everyone else in his life and has him kill his own parents by turning them into life-sized but lifeless dummies. As it turns out, however, he had crossed it long before already by trying to sacrifice thousands of people in an attempt to unleash horrors on the world.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • "Go Eat Worms" is full of this, with Lucas consuming worms and garbage throughout the episode and vomiting out the former near the end. Not to mention the worms visibly crawling under his skin.
  • Biddle (while possessing Bratt) is seen absolutely scarfing a bowl of juicy fat worms in the next episode like a bowl of cereal.
• Tear Jerker: Lucas learning that the death-defying stunt his father tried to attempt was actually him committing suicide.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The series is set around the entirely original story of Harold Biddle’s ghost, the curse upon the Biddle family property and all its haunted items, and the evil spirit of Kanduu inhabiting Slappy the Dummy, and it takes a very broad approach to most elements taken from the original books. Combined with the more mature tone and adult themes never seen in the franchise previously, some feel there isn’t very much Goosebumps left in the show.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The Cuckoo Clock of Doom focused on the protagonist gradually de-aging out of existence and re-experiencing the worst days of his life, potentially a perfect premise for a darker reimagining. The episode instead focuses very briefly on a "Groundhog Day" Loop to justify duplicating James.
  • The final episode is titled "Welcome to Horrorland", and even reveals that Kanduu first became Slappy at a failing carnival in the 19th century. We're expecting this to lead to a big showdown where he transports the gang back in time to said carnival or perhaps resurrects it as a more macabre version. But the remainder of the episode otherwise has nothing to do with said book, and ultimately has more in common with A Night in Terror Tower.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Mr. Bratt was apparently fired for giving an Rousing Speech about creative writing to a biology class. This is presented as reasonable, and we're told he's done it before. That said, we're only shown a few seconds of the speech, so there's no evidence it took up a significant amount of time or prevented him from teaching the rest of the lesson. Overall, it comes across like Disproportionate Retribution by the Principal.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Lucas. While his grief and idolization of his father could excuse his reckless tendencies, it doesn't excuse the damage he causes to other people's belongings. And while him destroying Colin car's windshield could be excused since he just discovered his mother is having an affair with Colin (cheating on Colin's wife) and the worms possibly influencing his behavior (although they seem to act more like enablers than corrupters), the same can't be said for him breaking Isabella's drone the previous episode, an action for which he doesn't show enough remorse for. In the penultimate episode, on a trip to the city his girlfriend is considering moving to, he spends the whole time being passive-aggressive and causing discomfort, and when she calls him out on it he takes it as an excuse to leave and ghost her. When he falls for the obvious Lotus-Eater Machine trap, not many viewers were that concerned about his state.