R.L STINE’S PUMPKINHEAD (2026)

Sam (Bean Reid), a 13-year-old boy, has recently moved from New York to a small Midwestern town with his mother, Cassie (Kendra Anderson), and brother, Finn (Seth Isaac Johnson), following his father’s death. The town is overseen by Falmer Palmer (Kevin McNulty), whose pumpkin patch has kept the community afloat ever since a dry spell at the turn of the century.

By that, they mean 2003. That made me feel old. I’m still inclined to think of the turn of the century as a time of top hats and canes, not low-rise denim and studded bracelets. Sam learns about this distant past from Becka (Adeline Low), the daughter of the local sheriff (Bob Frazer). But he finds himself in trouble when, in a fit of teenage rebellion, he steals a strange pumpkin from Palmer. It’s growing in a barn, and its colour is peculiar, bumpy and sickly…

I’ve always been fond of R.L Stine. He’s a hack who’s produced hundreds of books—and probably still does. At the height of the original Goosebumps era, he was putting out two a week. But I mean that in the best way. He writes trash for kids very deliberately: his stories are meant to entertain, without any deeper meaning or message.

Their appeal lies in the way they repackage horror plots and offer daffy storylines, unconstrained by considerations of style or substance. I read a Goosebumps book as a child in which a boy discovers that he and his friends are household pets, given special shampoo to turn them into children for infertile couples. How many children’s writers today would come up with something so hilariously bizarre?

Pumpkinhead is in that vein. Hopefully, it’ll inspire some kids to pick up a Stine book. The importance of trashy writers for young readers can’t be overstated. Teach children to read for pleasure first, and the rest will follow. Stine’s Pumpkinhead is based on a short story from his 1999 collection Nightmare Hour.

I wonder whether Stine was borrowing from the 1988 horror film Pumpkinhead and its subsequent franchise. Part of his approach is to take adult plots and ideas and rework them for younger readers. The Goosebumps series alone has probably turned every old monster movie into middle-grade prose. The Pumpkinhead franchise is undoubtedly why this film is called R.L Stine’s Pumpkinhead.

It’s a well-plotted piece of young adult fiction, with plenty of comedy and self-awareness about genre tropes. Matty Finochio gives a fun performance as a local hermit who lives in the forest. He reminded me of French Stewart’s work in sitcoms such as 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001) and children’s comedies such as Home Alone 4 (2002) and Inspector Gadget 2 (2003).

The child actors are fairly good, as child actors go. I found Sam annoying in the first act, though I’m no longer a child—if I ever was. His clothes and attitude seem true to how young teenagers might act in this kind of situation: they’ve been thrown into a new environment and feel they have no control over their lives. In that sense, stealing the pumpkin makes sense. Children act out when they feel powerless. Stine isn’t a deep writer, but his familiarity with young characters comes through here.

The film was written and directed by Jem Garrard, a British filmmaker whose career includes campy horror works such as Slay (2024) and the TV series Vagrant Queen (2020). Garrard’s poppy sensibility suits the material, evoking the supernatural elements of the story and its setting while keeping things jolly enough not to give children nightmares. That said, the film is probably still too intense for very young viewers, who may be alarmed by the chase scenes featuring the Pumpkinhead monster, a sort of skinny Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

Plotting is one of the film’s strengths. It offers twists and turns that you don’t always see in children’s films today. The adult actors do well, too. McNulty is a pleasantly watchable, grizzled old man of the sort common to this genre, embodying children’s resentment and fear of stern patriarchal figures—elderly gents who are always yelling at them to get off their property. Frazer makes a good-looking sheriff and single dad, while Anderson brings warmth and maternal feeling to her role. Johnson is a decent older brother, and Low is a confident actor with a promising career ahead of her, should she choose to pursue one.

The ending sets up a sequel. It doesn’t quite leave the story unfinished, but it comes close. I imagine that, as this is a Tubi affair—the app offers a mix of ‘real’ films, such as Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Hitchcock films from the early sound era, alongside the kind of stuff that doesn’t even qualify as junk, which you’d have to be paid to watch, such as Special Needs Revolt! (2024) and The Grinch That Stole Bitches (2024)—the idea is to churn out filler content and drag a few eyeballs away from Netflix. If you’re looking for something to watch with the kids this Halloween, you could do a lot worse.

USA | 2026 | 91 MINUTES | 1.78:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Jem Garrard.
writer: Jem Gerrard (based on ‘Nightmare Hour’ by R.L Stine).
starring: Bean Reid, Adeline Lo, Matty Finochio, Troy James, Kevin McNulty, Bob Frazer, Seth Isaac Johnson & Kendra Anderson.