The Stinal Countdown: Goosebumps Hall of Horrors #4: Why I Quit Zombie School

Past the halfway point for Hall of Horrors and thankfully we're out of the special editions for the remainder of this series. Entering book number four and this time we're dealing with some zombies. And some school. And a need to quit it. Let's get aca-dead-mic with Why I Quit Zombie School.

COVER STORY

Brandon Dorman knocks it out of the park again with another amazing cover.  I love the angle, the use of color  and shadow. Even a bit of warping. But the star of the cover is easily the zombie teen adorned in ratty letterman jacket. He looks legitimately frightening and otherworldly. The eyeball popping out is a really nice touch to add the freakishness. If Hall of Horrors has impressed me with anything it's that it's presented some of the best artwork of the modern era.

STORY

Same situation as before. We're welcomed to the Hall of Horrors by the Story-Keeper, who tells some ghoulish puns and introduces our storyteller this time, Matt Krinsky. He carries with him a rubber hand which he says is what saved him from the scariest school in the world.

Matt tends to be a pessimistic lad. Usually seeing the worst in things. He's also big into horror and stuff like that. This is in stark contrast to his parents and his older sister Jamie in particular. The family have recently moved, much to Matt's annoyance since he has a tiny bedroom. Even worse is that he has to go to a boarding school named Romero Academy. Ah, I see what you did there, Stine. Matt doesn't, as he's confused as to what kind of school would be called Romero Academy. Matt says that he thinks that maybe there'll be a maniac in the school or something, but his family just teases him. They arrive and Matt notices that despite everything around the school being sunny and bright, the school, an old stone building, is super shadowy. 

They enter the school and look around. Seems kind of normal so far until Matt thinks he sees three boys outside eating a dead squirrel. But when he tells his family, the boys disappear. the family are greeted by a man with an onion shaped head. But sadly, it's not Chop Chop Master Onion, it's the principal, Mr. Craven. Okay, Stine, we get it. He inquires about Matt's decent soccer skills and suggests he plays for their team The Vultures. Matt then meets one of his fellow students, Franny Roth. Okay, Stine, we get it. Franny tours Matt around the school. Matt notices the students moving slowly. He also runs into two giant twins with pupil-less eyes named Wayne and Angelo. Lemme guess, is their last name Carpenter or Cronenberg? 

Well, we never know that answer, nor does Matt get a good answer as to why the twins have no pupils. Franny just responds like it doesn't matter. Wayne and Angelo take over for Franny and take Matt to the Gym while also passing the cafeteria. Kids can go in to eat whenever they want, but they can also go outside to "prowl", which Matt is, of course, confused by. They arrive at the gym where kids are playing volleyball like some sort of, I don't know, undead things. I wonder what you call those things as Matt's still not getting it. They mention Coach Meadows (finally a non-pun name, I think) who "still has the juice", but he's not around as he teaches the older students. The two also mention something called moon fever and a place called the Reviver Room. 

Matt is still confused about all of this, and even more so when Wayne slips down the stairs and cracks his head. He then recovers like nothing's wrong. Nobody checks on him or anything, not even Angelo, who just says what everyone says, "you know how it is". Matt tries to tell his family about all the strangeness, but they don't believe him because Goosebumps family. After the family leaves, Matt gets settled in his dorm room. He takes some monster makeup he has and puts it on his face, making him look more ghoulish. He tries to scare Franny, but she doesn't react. Matt asks about Wayne and she tells him that he went to the Reviver Room, where they turn up the voltage and really revive them. But, it didn't take for Wayne and he's gone. Matt notices a fenced area, but Franny says not to go there as it's too depressing. Matt is, of course, still not cluing in on any of this.

Some more time passes and Matt is becoming better friends with Franny. When he asks how long she's been at Romero, she doesn't recall. Matt meets with Angelo and they go to the big center hall area called Center Court. He then sees a kid pull a New Jack and dive off the balcony with a thud. Matt freaks out, but the students applaud and also continue to dive off the balcony like that old lemmings myth. Matt gets asked to dive, but he turns it down. He calls his family later, but they, of course, don't believe him about any of this. He goes to eat at the cafeteria and sees kids eating food whole. Suddenly one kid makes weird groaning sounds and starts to vomit everywhere. Guess what emotion Matt is right now, and guess how everyone else reacts? The kid is next to be sent to the Reviver Room. 

Later, Matt tries to ask Franny again about what's going on, but she mostly wants to focus on studying. Another girl with blue eyes and black lipstick named Alana shows up and inquires about Matt. She studies with them for a bit then leaves, allowing Matt to try and inquire again. However, Franny wants to know something instead. When did Matt die? Matt says he hasn't, which freaks out Franny. Because both Matt and herself are the only living kids in this school. Matt thinks this is a joke until Franny tells him that Romero Academy is a zombie school. She tells him that he has to act like a zombie or he'll be killed for real. Matt asks if he could run, but she says that the school is surrounded by crows. Ones that know to screech like an alarm at anyone who tries to escape.  Matt calls his parents to ask if they knew they enrolled him in a zombie school, but... 

Suddenly, Angelo arrives and says that he now knows the truth... that Matt was star player in his old school's soccer team. Matt practices for Coach Meadows, who is a bald, bony man who doesn't look like a coach. Matt remembers Franny's advice to play like a zombie would, but Matt ends up accidentally kicking so hard he kicks off a fellow player's leg. The coach is impressed, a bit too impressed, as are Angelo and his friend Mikey. Parents day arrives which means a visit to the family. And here we go again. Honestly, this is so far reaching high Because Goosebumps Parents levels. They also miss a kid leaping off the balcony due to phone fumbling. Matt tries to get Franny to tell them, but she doesn't. Later, she tells Matt it's because that would have been the worst time to admit being in a zombie school. Not only that, the rest of the school is starting to suspect that Matt's not who they think he is. 

A school party is held that night and Matt decides to go since Franny suggested it. He takes with him a rubber hand that he thinks will be a great icebreaker. He tries to do the stomp dance that the rest of the school does, but fails. It's there that he gets accosted by four popular boys led by a kid named Ernie. Franny gets him out of there in time, but tells him he'll have to dance like a zombie to remain convincing. He ends up at the food table filled with rotten fruit and runs into a girl named Evie who gives him a rotten pear that he eats, then she asks him to dance. He obliges, but when she touches him, she notices that his flesh is still warm. He manages to convince the others that his flesh is still warm because he only died a couple weeks ago. The students, led by Ernie, tell Matt to do "the test", that being jumping off the balcony.

But before he goes splat, he remembers a rubber hand he had in his pocket. He slides it in his sleeve then lets it drop. The rest of the kids fall for it, but Ernie tells Matt that he needs to go to the Reviver Room to get his hand glued back on. He takes Matt to the room which is filled with a red light and a bunch of wires. The Reviver isn't there, but Ernie volunteers to do it for Matt. But before Ernie can flip the switch, his friends arrive and take him back to the party. Matt is overjoyed, believing he's escaped death, but suddenly Angelo arrives. But he falls for Matt saying that the reviving is over and the electricity is what is making his flesh warm.

The next day, Matt has the brilliant idea to wear more zombie makeup to fool the other kids. It works... until he gets to gym. Everything goes well when suddenly he starts sweating. Zombies don't sweat. Nor do they have makeup that runs off. The zombies also hear his heartbeat. Matt's been found out, so he makes a dash for it. He manages to escape by jumping over the fence from earlier. It's there he finds himself in a cemetery. All the kids graves are there, including Wayne, Angelo's, and Franny's. Yep. Franny was a zombie this entire time. 

Speaking of Franny, she arrives with a rope ladder to free him from the cemetery. She admits that she was sent by the other students to spy on him. To make sure he was a real zombie like the others. He will unfortunately now have to pass one more test. He needs to survive three things: staying underwater for 20 minutes, being hit by an SUV and being thrown off a cliff. If he can make it through those, they'll believe he's a zombie. The time approaches for Matt's final test. Beforehand, he grabs the fake hand again and once again puts on the makeup, this time making him look more gruesome and thereby more convincing than ever before. 

Matt exits his room to start the test, but the kids see the hand once more and instead take him to the Reviver Room. He's met by an old man calling himself The Reviver. Despite Matt's protests, The Reviver sets him in the seat, ready to throw the switch. The machine doesn't work, but Matt still says that the machine revived him so well that he's alive again. That's more than enough to expel him from Romero Academy.

TWIST ENDING

Matt is moved to a new school. No more zombies to worry about. But when he goes to drink from a fountain, he sees a strange red liquid pour out. He then notices that his new fellow students are drinking red liquid from bowls. A man in a suit welcomes Matt to Dracula Academy. Come on Stine, you could have called it Stoker School. 

The Story Keeper once again thanks Matt for telling his story, then leads him to his room. He then greets a boy named Jack Harmon who tells the Story Keeper that there's someone in his cellphone that makes him do horrible things. 

CONCLUSION

This one is mediocre. It's definitely the book that takes the longest to really set anything up so far. We spend a lot of time with Matt seeing these zombies act like zombies, but never cluing in. Given he's a horror buff, I'd have hoped he'd have clued in on the school being named after George Romero. And that's really the problem with using the famous horror director names. They're a neat touch, but when your protagonist, a self-proclaimed horror fan, doesn't clue in on them, then it makes him feel like a poser. Or at least that the hints weren't obvious. Matt is an okay protagonist regardless. Slow to get the hint, which takes forever until he's literally told by Franny about the school. 

The pacing is a bit messy too. We spend so much time, multiple chapters, focusing on Matt trying to reveal the truth to his family, only to not be believed. The book does have some great imagery though. The gross food, the damage the zombies take, some decent gory moments. But it all feels like it repeats itself a lot, including the two trips to the Reviver Room. Also, if we were just going to bring him back to the room, why did Stine add that whole thing about the final test? I think Stine had zero idea how to execute them without killing Matt, so he lazed out and gave us this ending. The twist is also pretty lame too, not because of the concept of a vampire school, but it just feels way too predictable. Of course he'd go from one monster school to another. In the end, this one's one of the weaker books so far from Hall of Horrors. A neat concept but a clunky execution. It's a book that's more undead than alive. Why I Quit Zombie School gets a C.