Spoilers

“Night of the Living Dummy”

Goosebumps on Disney + continues with some excellent episodes as they reached the episode featuring the dummy that gave nightmares to plenty of kids in the 1980s.

We hear the story of Slappy from the mouth of Mr. Bratt, who is of course possessed by the spirit of Harold Biddle. He tells the kids how Harold came into possession of the dummy and how their parents were involved in his death and subsequent removal of Slappy.

Mr. Bratt became more agitated and disgruntled as he told the story, but the kids were hearing it in a different manner than his own POV. He was becoming irritated that the kids did not share his POV of what happened. His reveal at the end of the episode was well done and made me happy. The possession of Bratt and having him pretend as if things were normal had definitely run its course. I’m pleased that the show took this step because a lot of shows would drag that mystery out for several episodes.

As for Slappy, we have certainly seen this concept before. There were living ventriloquist dolls in The Twilight Zone (Caesar and Willie), Batman the Animated Series (Scarface), and The Ventriloquist Dummy (Hugo). Throw in there dolls such as Annabelle and Chucky, these scary dummy/dolls are used quite a bit. Slappy is a great character to introduce younger kids to this trope.

Will the show be able to make this dummy different from the ones that came before? I hope so, and the show has been doing a great job so far.