The Goosebumps book with the cursed camera — again.
After the events of Say Cheese and Die!, Greg has to write an essay on what he did during the summer holidays. Naturally, he writes about his experience with the evil camera; his teacher, Mr. Saur, gives him an F for obvious lying, but agrees to change his grade if he can get some sort of proof. Greg obtains the camera from the ruins of the abandoned house — again. Pictures get taken which show people getting injured or dying, which inevitably come true — again. Now, Greg and Shari must find some way to undo the effects of the photos and save their friends and themselves — again.
It was adapted into episode 18 of the third season of the TV series.
The book provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Greg is cursed to continually gain weight, putting on more than three hundred pounds in one day, and his parents chalk it up to an allergy attack and leave him to just go to school as normal the next day. Even though he can't fit in their car. Meanwhile, his friend Shari is cursed to continue to lose weight until she looks like "a stick with a lemon on the top", and again is just sent to school as normal.
- Ambiguous Ending: Greg decides to bring the camera back to school to take a picture of Mr. Saur as payback for not believing his story and for mocking him after his weight gain. Before he's able to do the deed, Mr. Saur confiscates the camera and ends up taking a picture of the entire class. The book ends with Greg and the rest of the class waiting to see what the resulting picture looks like.
- Blunt "Yes": When Greg goes up to the front of the classroom to tell his story about the camera, fellow classmate and bully Donny Green stuck his foot and almost tripped Greg as he was going up, causing the class to all laugh. Mr. Saur frowned at Donny and asked him if he had to trip every person who walks by him. Donny replies "yes" with a straight face. This causes the class to burst out laughing again.
- Bowdlerise: The 2018 ebook removes the bullies being called Sumo 1 and Sumo 2. It also tries to remove as many of the more unflattering descriptions of Greg as possible, as well as any references to weight specifically.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Greg first tries to show Mr. Saur the camera, the teacher thinks he's trying to take his picture and replies that he already had his photo taken for the yearbook.
- Contagious Cassandra Truth: Discussed Trope. When Mr. Saur at first doesn't believe Greg's story, Greg offers to let Mr. Saur ask his friends to let him know that he's telling the truth. Mr. Saur replies that he's sure that his friends will tell him whatever he wants them to tell him. And when Greg's friends later let him know that they'll have his back to inform Mr. Saur, he lets them know that they won't be of any help.
- Damned by Faint Praise: A miserable Shari moans to Greg that she lost eight pounds that morning. Shocked, but trying to cheer her up, Greg lamely tells her that eight pounds isn't so much. This only makes her even more frantic. He tries again by suggesting that she should eat a really big lunch, which causes her to snap that he's no help.
- Demoted to Extra: Bird and Michael's role are diminished, not taking much part in the plot this time around.
- Didn't Think This Through: It never seemed to cross Greg's mind that no one will believe a story of him and his misadventures of the evil camera he and his friends used in the past summer. So why write a report on such a story that everyone else will obviously not believe?
- Disproportionate Retribution: At the end of the story, Greg decides to take a photo of Mr. Saur with the camera as revenge for not believing Greg's story about the camera and making fun of Greg for his weight gain. Considering that this could have very well killed the man, this comes across as an attempted murder.
- Door Slam of Rage: After Mr. Saur once again refuses to believe Greg's story, even with him showing a photo of the camera's effects as proof, Greg reacts by storming out of the classroom and slamming the door behind him.
- Dude, Not Funny!: As soon as the now incredibly obese Greg gets to Mr. Saur's classroom, he starts making fun of his weight and embarrassing him in front of the whole class. The other students don't laugh at his jokes at all, knowing that something is seriously wrong with Greg.
- "Eureka!" Moment: As Greg and Shari are wondering what to do to get back to normal, she tells him to think positive. He suddenly tenses and asks her to repeat that again, which she does. This gives him the brilliant idea of taking the photos that cursed them and bring them to the camera shop that Greg's brother works at, to ask him if he can reverse the photos in order to turn them back to normal. Sure enough, it works perfectly.
- Everyone Has Standards: As Greg starts to gain weight, other children around him start laughing at his misfortune. But by the next day, he has gotten so fat to the point that all the students in school notice and don't make fun of him at all. And when Mr. Saur mocks him and makes him go to the school nurse, all of the students in class are silent. Even Donny and Brian, two bullies whom gave Greg a hard time for his magic camera claim, don't trip him and try not to look at him.
- Facepalm:
- Mr. Saur has both his hands bury his head upon hearing Greg's book report on the evil camera for the first time. Greg fails to notice that this indicates that he doesn't believe his story at all.
- Later at lunch, when Greg tells his friends that Mr. Saur didn't believe his claim about the magic camera, Bird responded by dropping his sandwich onto the table and doing this trope. Unfortunately for him, he had egg salad in his hand when he did this, so he got his forehead and fingers smeared with it.
- The Fat Episode: Greg attempts to bring the cursed carnera to his teacher Mr. Sour to prove that it's real, only for him get a picture of himself getting fat. Cue Greg getting fatter every day, forcing him to find a way to reverse the effect before he explodes.
- Gum In Hair: Greg approaches Shari while they're walking after school, and he sees her blowing a bubble-gum bubble nearly as big as her head. He pops it, causing it to stick all over her face. She has to pull gum from her hair.
- Hot Teacher: The principal of Pitts Landing Middle School, Mr. Grand, who shows up in this book. Greg notes that not only does he look more like a surfer than a principal, being young and having wavy blond hair and a good tan, but also that all the girls in school have crushes on him. The ebook removes this detail though.
- Magical Camera: The camera causes tragedy to befall any person photographed with it — again.
- Matter of Life and Death: Greg thinks of him failing his grade to be like this.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: While talking at the dinner table, Greg's family discuss about his brother's new job at the camera store, and even ask Greg himself to bring a camera to take photos of the beautiful scenery at their trip to his cousins in Yosemite. Greg finds this to be torture, as he's wanting to steal a camera later that night, all for to change a grade to get him on this very trip.
- Rapid-Fire "But!": Greg has this response when Mr. Saur tells him after class that his story is too wild for him to believe.
- And near the end of the book, when Greg tells Shari that he wants to take Mr. Saur's picture with the camera and refuses her attempts to stop him, the shocked girl responds with this trope.
- Sadist Teacher: Mr. Saur takes great pleasure in publicly humiliating his students. There's a reason they call him Sour Sourball.
- Series Continuity Error: Greg uses the events of the first book as a story on what he did over summer. However, it was actually set during the Fall. Unlike a similar case in Return of the Mummy, this wasn't fixed in later versions.
- Shout-Out: The camera cursing Greg and Shari with weight related problems and Greg later getting a scaly skin rash are probably allusions to Thinner.
- Smack on the Back: When greeting Greg after school to go bike riding, Bird smacks him on the back so hard that he stumbled off the curb.
- Spooky Photographs: The photos taken with the camera always show somebody suffering — again.
- Teacher's Unfavorite Student: Greg gets stuck with a grumpy teacher named Mr. Saur. He gave Greg an F for writing a report on the cursed camera from the last book which he didn't believe. After Greg gets a picture taken of him by the cursed camera and becomes fat, Mr. Saur starts to make fun of his weight.
- Tears of Joy: Greg's mother sheds these upon seeing Greg finally skinny again.
- Teasing the Substitute Teacher: On the day that Greg first wants to show Mr. Saur the dreaded camera, he is dismayed to find that a substitute teacher, Ms. Rose, is teaching today instead. The students in the class were all shouting, laughing, and throwing paper while she's trying to teach. Greg notes that the class always give substitutes a really hard time.
- Took a Level in Dumbass: Greg is much more stupid than in the first book. For starters, he expects his class to believe his story about the evil camera despite the fact it involves the supernatural and he initially didn't bring any proof of it. He's actually surprised when nobody believes him. On top of that, when he brings the camera to school, he does not get the idea to try and take a picture of an inanimate object so that he can prove his story without the camera harming a person, instead refusing to use it at all. Greg has also forgotten about the fact that the camera is supposedly indestructible; he thinks the camera is broken at one point, worries that it was destroyed when the home it was in was torn down, and doesn't consider demonstrating its indestructability to the class to prove himself.
- Too Unhappy to Be Hungry: Before Greg goes to get the camera back, he has dinner with his family. Greg notes that he's too nervous to eat, and his stomach felt as if it were tied in a tight knot. When his parents notice that he didn't eat at all, Greg replied by lying that he isn't hungry because he ate too much junk after school.
- Wardrobe Malfunction: While in school a day after their photos are taken, Greg sees Shari in the hallway, and she runs to meet him. But while doing so, the skirt she was wearing fell down, causing the embarrassed girl to stop and pull it back up.
- Greg himself goes through plenty of these, when his pajamas and his pants rip open from his new massive size.
- Weight Loss Horror: The book has this trope both Played Straight and Inverted. Greg and his friend Shari both fall victim to the evil camera, with a picture showing him as morbidly obese, and Shari as a skeleton. He starts to gain weight involuntarily, she starts to lose it.
- Weight Woe: The cursed camera inflicts both ends of this trope on Greg and Shari. Shari is gradually losing weight until she is almost reduced to a flesh-covered skeleton, while Greg becomes morbidly obese. Some extra Body Horror is added when Greg has his picture taken again and develops a horrible skin rash.
- Workplace-Acquired Abilities: Greg's brother Terry has a job at the local photo place. This becomes useful later when the kids need to find a way to turn the photos into a negative and positive to reverse the camera's effects.
- Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: When Greg goes into the dumpster to retrieve the camera, he glances inside and finds a pair of cold, unblinking yellow eyes staring at him. These turn out to belong to a dead raccoon.
- "You!" Exclamation: Upon seeing Greg at morning finally skinny again, Mr. Banks does this trope while pointing at his son, struggling to speak properly. He finally works it up.
