10 Family Friendly Horror Films To Scare Kids (And Their Parents) This Halloween

Talking of Goosebumps, the 2015 movie adaptation of that 90s kids' horror staple came as a bit of a surprise in quite what a fun monster-packed romp it turned out to be.

Between 1992 and 98, Robert Lawrence Stine's stories of kids battling supernatural creatures and classic horror set-ups spawned 62 books and 74 episodes of its accompanying kid-friendly TV horror anthology show. With hundreds of millions of books sold, Goosebumps is second only to Harry Potter as the highest selling book series of all time.

Its 90s peak popularity seemed to have passed, though. A mooted Tim Burton-produced movie never happened, as much through the difficulty of narrowing things down to an individual Goosebumps story and monster to adapt as any other reason. A new version many years later from the director of Shark Tale and the misfiring Jack Black Gulliver's Travels didn't seem like the most hopeful possible outcome for the popular series' big screen debut.

Rob Letterman's film turned out to be a lot of fun, though, cleverly solving the question of which book to adapt with the answer "all of them" and making a far better use of Jack Black's manic energy (as both a fictionalised version of Stine and his most famous creation: Slappy the Dummy) than Gulliver.

Goosebumps provides a few solid scares for younger kids and a fun romp, filled with cameos and easter eggs from the book series, for older ones and adults alike.