Directed by Rob Letterman, with a screenplay by Darren Lemke, the film stars Jack Black as a fictionalized and exaggerated version of R. L. Stine, who teams up with his neighbor (Dylan Minnette) and his teenage daughter (Odeya Rush) to save their hometown after all the monsters from the Goosebumps franchise escape from his works, wreaking havoc in the real world.

The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for its humor, pacing and faithfulness to the Goosebumps franchise.

Following his father's death, teenager Zach Cooper and his mother Gale move from New York City to the Delawarean town of Madison, where the latter has gotten a new job as the vice-principal of its local high school.

In response to Champ's curiosity about them, Zach unlocks the one cataloging The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena and the story's titular character emerges from it.

Hannah's father is soon revealed to be R. L. Stine, the disturbed genius behind the Goosebumps franchise; he originally wrote the stories to cope with severe bullying, but their respective monsters managed to escape into reality due to his overactive imagination and was forced to keep them imprisoned in their manuscripts.

En route, the quartet is attacked by Brent Green from My Best Friend is Invisible and the giant mantis from A Shocker on Shock Street, forcing them to seek refuge in the local grocery store.

Will Blake from The Werewolf of Fever Swamp chases and corners them in its parking lot where he is run over by Lorraine, who narrowly escaped from Fifi.

They find the typewriter and Stine starts writing a story based on the events around them while Zach and Champ attempt to warn everyone, but nobody believes them until the mantis attacks the building.

To ensure everyone's safety, the quartet trick the monsters into following a school bus rigged with explosives while they board another and travel to the abandoned amusement park.

To his horror, Brent Green is revealed to have been omitted in his fellow monsters' reimprisonment and is using the typewriter to write a new Goosebumps story titled The Invisible Boy's Revenge.

[17] Kumail Nanjiani and Luka Jones appear as two movers who encounter Slappy in an alternate opening sequence featured on home media releases.

In the mid 1990s, George A. Romero wrote a script for a film adaptation of the first original Goosebumps book Welcome to Dead House.

[18] The popularity of the Fox Kids' Goosebumps television series generated an interest among fans for a full-feature film based upon the show.

Chris Meledandri, the president of Fox Family Films at the time, said, "I think you'll see us tackling a scale of story that would be prohibitive to do on the small screen".

[21] Neal Moritz and Deborah Forte, the latter of whom had previously worked on the Goosebumps television series in the 1990s, were chosen to produce the film.

[27] In September 2013, it was reported that Jack Black was in talks to "play a Stine-like author whose scary characters literally leap off the page, forcing him to hide from his own creepy creations".

[28] It was announced in February 2014 that Dylan Minnette had been cast as Zach Cooper,[31] and Odeya Rush as the Stine-like author's daughter, Hannah.

[17] The film was promoted at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con where Jack Black and Rob Letterman interacted with Slappy the Dummy.

Slappy even brought some of his "friends" out consisting of the Bog Monster from How to Kill a Monster, two Graveyard Ghouls from Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls, Cronby the Troll and a Mulgani from Deep in the Jungle of Doom, the Lord High Executioner from A Night in Terror Tower, Murder the Clown from A Nightmare on Clown Street, the Mummy of Prince Khor-Ru from Return of the Mummy, Captain Long Ben One-Leg from Creep from the Deep, Professor Shock from The Creepy Creations of Professor Shock, Count Nightwing from Vampire Breath, a Creep from Calling All Creeps!, a Body Squeezer from Invasion of the Body Squeezers: Part 1 and Part 2, Carly Beth Caldwell's Haunted Mask form from The Haunted Mask, a Scarecrow from The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight, and a Pumpkin Head from Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns.

[45] The soundtrack for the film, featuring original music composed by Danny Elfman, was released on CD on October 23, 2015, by Sony Classical Records.

[48][49][50] The film opened on October 16, 2015, alongside Bridge of Spies, Crimson Peak, and Woodlawn, however box office pundits noted that it did not face serious competition except for The Martian, which was entering its third week.

In the United Kingdom, preview takings helped Goosebumps top the box office ahead of the more heavily hyped Dad's Army.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Goosebumps boasts more than enough of its spooky source material's kid-friendly charm to make up for some slightly scattershot humor and a hurried pace.

[62] Kevin P. Sullivan of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B rating, citing at the end of his review: "Nothing about Goosebumps is revolutionary—at a certain point you may realize that it's as if Nickelodeon produced Cabin in the Woods—but it's a never-boring trip to a world, where stories and imagination are powerful tools, that just might inspire kids to do the scariest thing of all: pick up a book".

[63] Geoff Berkshire of Variety wrote: "The ADD overload combined with an understandably kid-friendly approach to horror (no one’s ever in real danger, and the monsters are never too scary) results in a disposable product intended to appeal to everyone but likely to resonate with no one.