Rereading My Childhood - Goosebumps: Welcome to Camp Nightmare by R. L. Stine
In which a terrifying sequence of events pushes a young boy to an extreme, no one goes into the Forbidden Bunk, and a grown man is cavalier about firearms and children.
In which a terrifying sequence of events pushes a young boy to an extreme, no one goes into the Forbidden Bunk, and a grown man is cavalier about firearms and children.
So what, exactly, is the deal with camp? Not the ironic use of common imagery, but the literal place. The place in the woods where parents dropped off their children. I never went to camp. In the summer, I stayed inside my home, watching TV or reading Goosebumps books. My parents didn’t think it was worth the money. Even if they did, there’s no way I would want to go to a place with a uniform and structured fun. It’s not fun if I can’t stop doing it when I eventually get bored.
Other kids went to camp. My partner went to a camp. They never had much to say about it, and neither does my partner. Is it the unforgettable experience of archery and boat maintenance that the most optimistic media I consumed portrays it as? Is it a place for lifelong friendships based on marshmallows and fire? Did everyone learn some important lessons on character and citizenship that I wasn’t privy to?
Or was it a terrifying experience that left kids with PTSD? That’s the one I see the most, probably because of all my Jason Voorhees merchandise and the fact that I mostly consume horror media. But it seems like a lot of horror media is centered around camp. Is it because it’s the first time a kid is without their parents for an extended period of time? It is because camps are secluded, surrounded by tall, dark trees that loom over the kids like gigantic, leafy monsters? Should I be consuming more balanced camp media? Maybe, but this review is about a horrible camp, so we’re sticking with the horror theme.
Welcome to Camp Nightmare is about a 12-year-old kid named Billy and his adventures at Camp Nightmoon, a good time for the moon to be. He has several friends and bunkmates, all with a defining personality trait, so you remember which one is which. The cool one Colin, the athletic one Jay, and the pudgy one Mike (for my thoughts on that one, consult “Amy’s Random Plot Thoughts”). Uncle Al runs the camp, and Larry is their aloof counselor. Strange disappearances keep happening, and the children are attacked in various ways.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. The scares were, usually, actual scares. Not just some prank or jumpy main character. Those are still there, but their presence is balanced out with tangible peril for our main characters. The side characters are appropriately unhelpful. Compound all that with a mysterious camp, and you have the elements that should be in this type of book. Billy is an empathic and brave main character. Jay and Colin begin as annoying boys, but they show off their charms in time, and they are kind of fun. The book has sufficient mystery to keep me reading, and steady tension builds to its ultimate climax.
And that’s where the book falls apart.
This isn’t the first time a Goosebumps book has fallen apart at the end. These random endings seem to be the bar on the ground. There is no big scare. There is no satisfying ending. There is a revelation and a joke that bombs.
90% of the novel is one of the best Goosebumps books, and 10% is some inexplicable shit. So once you hit the climax, it’s time to close the book and believe that a ragtag group of tweens is destroying a monster-infested summer camp.
Should you read Goosebumps: Welcome to Camp Nightmare by R. L. Stine?
3.75★/5 If you enjoy the genre, this is something you should try.
The story starts with Billy introducing his friends, including Mike, the pudgy one. Stine likes to point out all the pudgy kids. There are several pudgy characters in his books, including Silent Night and Attack of the Jack-‘o-Lanterns, and another one I’m sure I’m forgetting.
The other friends are Jay and Colin, as well as some girls named Dawn and Dori. They are dropped off at their separate camp as soon as we meet them. They don’t do much, but they make an appearance later, so I have to mention them.
The bus driver drops off the boys in the middle of nowhere, and hungry wolves emerge from the woods to eat the children. The man who runs the camp, Uncle Al, saves the children with a giant gun and just fires near the children. The camp from Sleepaway Camp, the movie in which multiple children are murdered or attacked, is less susceptible to lawsuits and labor violations than this camp. Also, Uncle Al will use firearms irresponsibly near children again.
Our four main boys finally arrive at their camp, meet their counselor, Larry, and settle into their new surroundings in Bunk 4. They talk about the “Forbidden Bunk,” a bunk that is forbidden to enter. I’m sure that’s why Uncle Al gave it that moniker. Kids will definitely keep away from something that is “forbidden.” That’s why he used such strong language that will not entice the children to make up a story about a monster named “Sabre” and howling at night.
Snakes attack the boys. Well, two rubber snakes and a real one. The real one bites Mike, and he asks Larry to take him to the nurse. However, there is no nurse. There is Uncle Al, some Neosporin, and a bandage from the Eisenhower Administration. Again, I feel like a nurse is required by OSHA or some governing body to open a camp, but I guess it doesn’t matter. We’ll get to why.
The boys engage in some camp activities, despite Mike’s impending snakebite death, including a rousing game of “scratchball.” What’s scratchball, you ask? I don’t know. It’s the anti-The Baby-Sitters Club. Kristy isn’t here to give me an explanation about the game they’re playing. I never thought I’d miss it.
Anyway, during the game, Larry hurls the ball at Colin’s head (accidentally), and is hauled away to the non-existent nurse. Mike and his infected arm go with him. Later that night, our main character, Billy, finds Mike’s drawer cleared out.
During a tent night, Jay and Roger, the kid who took over Mike’s bed, sneak into the Forbidden Bunk. Jay comes out screaming. Roger is nowhere to be found. He lasted two sentences in my review and two pages in the book. The “pudgy” counselor that Larry eats with gets more time, and that’s everything we know about this counselor - he’s pudgy and he eats with Larry. Oh Roger. Your only personality trait was that you replaced another character. You will be missed.
The boys go swimming, and something attacks Billy underwater. It’s Dawn and Dori. Their camp isn’t much better. Girls are going missing, and the counselors are weird. Dawn and Billy promise to gather others and sneak away.
Before the rebellion, Billy tries to call home. Turns out “phony” is both what the phone is and the phone’s name. Did Stine name the phone? No, he didn’t. I named the phony phone “Phonie.”
Instead of calling, Billy writes a letter home. He discovers the letters are sitting unsent in a hidden building in the camp. With the cancellation of Visitor’s Day, escaping with the girls seems like the only way to avoid a terrible fate. Jay and Colin eventually disappear and are replaced by two random kids.
Billy, the random kids, and Larry go on a canoe trip. Larry falls out of the canoe. Billy jumps in after him and pulls him to shore. The two randoms stay in the canoe and are never seen again, but if you need to know their names, it’s “Tommy” and “Chris.” I wrote down their names even though they didn’t last longer than Roger. Do you remember Roger? Neither do I. These kids are disappearing before they get personality traits.
In our big, climactic scene, Uncle Al takes everyone on a special hike. Then he hands Billy a gun and orders him to hunt down and shoot two escaped campers from the girls’ side - Dawn and Dori. Billy refuses. Uncle Al threatens Billy.
This is where I hoped Billy would rebel against this bizarre camp with the boys in tow. They meet up with the girls’ camp and find the missing campers in a jail between the two camps, including the original camp staff. They free them, and it turns out that Uncle Al is a crazy person who escaped a mental hospital and kidnapped the original staff to play out his own twisted version of camp. That is not what happens.
As Billy stares down Uncle Al, Billy’s parents appear like the wolves at the beginning. It was all some elaborate test for Billy. The camp is a government testing lab and a gross misappropriation of taxpayer money. Everyone there is an actor. That includes Uncle Al, all the kids at camp, and Dawn and Dori.
But I guess it doesn’t matter if I would prefer my taxpayer money to go to, I don’t know, giving many kids food at school instead of a fake camp for one, singular kid with special agent parents. The book doesn’t take place in the United States. It doesn’t even take place on Earth. That’s right. The agents are testing their kid to ensure that he can handle the stresses of their impending special mission to Earth.
It’s goddamn aliens again. Like in Attack of the Jack-‘o-Lanterns, we have aliens. I genuinely liked this book until the ending. I liked how all the terror was real. I kept wondering if he was just having a nightmare, especially during the Forbidden Cabin scene. And I was pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t a nightmare. I was happy that, despite the title, there are no nightmares of the sleepy kind. However, the real nightmare was the pointless twist at the end.
A twist ending should be foreshadowed. Or still related to the text somehow. The twist ending of Stay Out of the Basement! is perfect when the plant starts insisting that it’s the main character’s father. Stine took a scene that already happened in the book and tweaked the context.
The book could be about every childhood experience being a training lesson for adulthood. Of course, that would imply that one of the government’s jobs is to prepare children for the future, and that’s just not happening in the United States. Not since Reagan, anyway. Or it’s a condemnation of our government. While other “aliens” (i.e., other countries) are preparing their children, we’re debating whether or not children should have supplies and exactly how much more we should gut the already-tight school budgets.
I’m not sure if either interpretation is relevant. This entire camp was set up for one kid. Remember, the other kids are actors. So maybe it’s a commentary on how only a few privileged children get preparation at the expense of the taxpayer and child labor. That sounds accurate. It’s definitely that one.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, but c’mon. No more endings like this. A book doesn’t need to have a twist to be a horror book. It could just be scary.