Recap: Goosebumps "The House of No Return"

Goosebumps is basically the kids' version of a B-grade slasher flick. It's cheesy, low-budget, and even if an episode isn't good per se, it can often be so-bad-it's-good.

Of course, there are some episodes that are simply so-bad-they're-still-bad. Chief among these is "The House of No Return," an episode so bad that it's not worth it to end this introduction with a proper joke.

I was considering some kind of joke regarding House of Mystery #131, but I'm not putting in the effort to make a joke only two people will get right away and only five people will bother to look up. Not for this episode.

The episode begins with a shot of the titular house as three kids wait outside. This is Danger Incorporated, a club consisting of three kids who may or may not have actually gone to the trouble of legally setting up their organization as a corporation.

Lori (Lauren Annis)

Robbie (Jeff Davis)

Nathan (Robin Weekes)

Apparently, they sent some other kid inside the house about ten minutes ago as some sort of initiation rite. If he can stay in the creepy abandoned house for about fifty more minutes, then he'll be entitled to all the perks and benefits befitting a member of the corporation.

The kids mention that the newbie has already beaten the previous record by ten minutes.

Lori: "He's probably in there taking a nap."

As a dog barks in the distance, and Nathan asks for some more sunflower seeds, only to be interrupted by a loud thud from inside the house. It's at this point that the three kids begin to disagree on what to do. They don't even like the guy they sent in there, so they don't want him to succeed... which makes me wonder why any of this is even happening. Unless Danger Incorporated has a strict policy regarding applications that they're sworn to follow to the letter.

Robbie: "But if he makes it, we're stuck with him."

"Our H.R. department is very clear on this matter."

Lori peeks inside to check up on the applicant... but can't see a darn thing in the dark house. Lucky for her, the applicant winds up running out of the house in terror, screaming about something touching his face.

Lori: "Good thing. Can you imagine if we had to let him into Danger Incorporated?"

Nathan: "Why do we have to let anybody in?"

Robbie: "Because we only have three members."

What, is there a quota you have to fill?

Nathan: "Yeah, but there were only three Stooges."

Robbie: "But that wasn't a corporation. A corporation should have a lot of members."

I... just...

I can't. I can't even. Please continue.

Lori: "I guess we have to look for another victim."

Nathan: "Someone cool."

Robbie: "And brave. Someone who won't freak eut in an empty, old house."

But there's yet another thing to address.

Lori: "'It touched my face.' What do you think he meant?"

Good question. "It touched my face" could mean anything.

They assume he was referring to a cobweb or something and decide to leave when the strange sounds continue. Unfortunately, five bucks seem to have fallen out of Nathan's pocket, meaning that he has to search for it on the porch. He successfully finds the Lincoln...

Yeah, right, Goosebumps; you can't fool me into thinking this is America.

...but the other two kids leave as the money blows into the house on a sudden gust of wind. So Nathan simply runs off without his cash, because he sure-as-heck ain't going in there.

The next day, we cut to our... um... protagonist? I think?

Or perhaps a young Nathan Fillion?

Either way, we cut to that old standard Goosebumps cliche where the kid moves into a new neighborhood. The kid, Chris (Dylan Provencher), is convinced by his mom to wander around the new neighborhood to try and make friends. But only as long as his mom makes him a bacon cheeseburger when he gets back.

Mother: "Always making deals...."

Hey, believe it or not, this counts as foreshadowing.

Chris: "Come on, Mom. With bacon."

Mother: "Okay. With bacon."

What a silver-tongued devil.

Chris ends up walking right past Danger Incorporated, giving them nothing more than a 'hi.' DI seems to be so hard up for new members, however, that they instantly chase after him to beg him to be in their little club corporation.

Lori: "No friends. The perfect candidate for Danger Incorporated."

Because... all three of you are lonely outcasts with no friends?

They consider the kid to be a walking win-win scenario. If he's brave, they get a new member. If not, they get to enjoy scaring him. So they make their offer to join Danger Incorporated.

Chris: "Oh, well, I'm not very brave."

Lori: "You like horror movies don't you?"

Chris leans in close and replies with badass confidence... while giving an oddly non-badass answer.

Chris: "No. Actually, I cover my eyes during the scary parts."

They take him over to the house anyway and tell him the deal: If he stays inside for one hour, he gets to join their organizaion.

Robbie: "They call it 'The House of No Return.'"

Which makes sense, since the only person we've seen inside so far... returned.

....Wait.

Lori: "Years ago, a young couple moved into town. A beautiful young woman and her husband."

"He was pretty nondescript."

Robbie: "He built this house for her. Their dream house. A place to raise their child."

Lori: "But he made a mistake in the construction of the house. Their child broke through a weak spot in the floor."

And that's why you should always hire professionals. DIY is a recipe for disaster.

Robbie: "And fell to her death."

Nathan: "The couple were so sad, they slowly went mad."

"Not at all glad. It got pretty bad for the mom and the dad, without the child they'd had."

Nathan: "Days, weeks, months went by, and the couple never came outside."

Lori: "One day, the police came. They entered the house. The couple were dead. Their bodies were taken away and the house was sealed up."

Robbie: "Days later, children from the neighborhood started to... disappear."

Nathan: "Some say they were kidnapped. Others say that the ghosts of the couple took them."

Which would still be kidnapping, technically.

Lori: "But it's probably just an empty, old house."

They try to peer pressure him into going inside when he asks the question.

Chris: "Have you done it?"

Yeah. None of them have actually gone inside.

Robbie: "But, well, we don't have to, you see, 'cause, uh, we started the organization."

Nathan: "We already know we like danger."

Lori: "It's our middle name."

Chris declines the peer pressure, so we cut to a later that night, during a meeting of the founders of Danger Incorporated.

Robbie: "Is there any new business?"

(Silence)

Robbie: "...You mean there's no new business?"

Nathan: "This is the most boring meeting I've ever been in."

Oh, shut up. You've got popcorn and the TV's on. Once you grow up and get a job, I can guarantee that you'll sit through worse meetings.

Lori: "They're all boring."

Well, they are meetings, after all.

Robbie: "We need a new member!"

Yeah, you need an additional person to be bored with. That'll help.

Lori: "You know, that Chris has a lot of nerve turning us down."

Well, maybe if you didn't have your stupid little initiation ritual, you'd have more friends.

Robbie: "Yeah. He is kinda stuck up, isn't he?"

Nathan: "Yeah, new kid. 'I'm a chicken, la-di-da!'"

You know what? Chris was oddly smug about being scared.

"I've peed my pants in fright during Teletubbies on two non-consecutive occasions. That's what's up, fools."

Lori: "Maybe we should teach him a lesson."

Robbie: "Yeah. Lesson number one: How to be brave."

They call Chris, having gotten his number somehow, and they invite him to the "mall." For some reason, Chris's mom approves of her son going to hang out at the mall after sunset and lets him walk over to Robbie's.

So Chris meets up with Danger Incorporated, and they head for the "mall" that seems to be in the same direction as the House of Yes Return. In fact, it is the House of Yes Return. And they want him to go inside. So badly, in fact, that they grab him and force him inside the house.

There are about nine minutes left in this episode.

And so, the episode gives us a couple blue-tinted minutes of these kids holding the door shut while Chris waits inside the dark house. Chris whistles the Goosebumps theme and watches a broom clean up a broken vase all by itself. Then a taxidermied owl tells him to beware. Then a hammer floats up and starts nailing boards to the door. Then the episode gets sick of teasing us and brings on the actual ghosts, who announce that they're coming for Chris.

Chris tries to escape the house as the ghosts come closer and closer and ends up screaming at the same time as Lori does outside the house. Lori was only screaming to make sure her friends were still awake, since Chris has actually managed to stay in the house for an hour.

So they force the door open and head inside to try and find the newest member of Danger Incorporated. Once inside, they begin wondering why and how the door was boarded up, unaware that it was the work of a floating hammer. And so, the kids look around for a bit, eventually noticing that the door has boarded itself back up.

There are about three minutes left in this episode.

Suddenly, the three kids are met by the ghosts of the house, one of which appears to be the inspiration for Helena Bonham Carter's costuming in pretty much everything she's appeared in since the 90s.

As well as a man who appears to be the hypothetical ghost offspring of Mark Strong and Tucker Cobblepot.

They welcome the kids to the House of No Return and explain what's going on. The ghosts wanted to keep Chris in the house for all eternity, but he made a deal instead.

Ghost Man: "Oh, you could never make the kind of deal he made. Very pleasing to my wife."

Let's forego a dirty joke and move on.

Ghost Man: "He promised that if we let him go, three children would take his place."

So the ghosts are pretty happy with this deal.

Ghost Woman: "We're a family now."

Ghost Man: "We love you."

Ghost Woman: "And we're going to love you... forever!"

So, you may be wondering what kind of twist ending this episode will have. Maybe they escape the house and discover that Chris was dead all along too? Maybe it was all the dream of the ghosts who want nothing more but to have a family?

Nope. That was the twist ending.

Chris made a deal with the ghosts and tricked the other three kids to take his place. Which, sure, sounds like a twist ending out of context, but it's too obvious an ending to be called a "twist" in context.

And as a final farewell to the audience, a bolt of lightning hits the building as if to say "Yeah. That's really it. The end."

Now that I've ripped this episode a new one, I'm going to be fair to it. The reason this episode is paper-thin and badly paced is because it was based on one of Stine's short stories. There wasn't much there to be stretched out into a full-length episode. But you know what? So was "An Old Story." They could have expanded the original text, but they didn't. And the episode suffers because of it.

So it's time to review this paper-thin episode and see if there's anything this episode does to warrant closer examination.