Meg and Chris can't wait to celebrate Halloween - until an orange alien named Bim shows up and starts causing total chaos in their lives. Bim is smelly and gross, just and he just won't leave them alone.
Meg and Chris need to get rid of this weirdo, once and for all. Can the strange gift they got in Horrorland save them?
Plot
Yeah, it's not Halloween, or anywhere near it, but what're you gonna do?
PART 1-The Return of Bootleg Zoltar
Meg and Chris Oliver are going around Horrorland. (*takes shot*) They go into the Tunnel of Screams (it's like the Tunnel of Love, only it's somehow even worse) where Meg gets scared, as she puts it, for the first time in 'her 12 years.' Who narrates like that? She grabs Chris's shoulder, only for him to turn around and reveal that his face has fallen off, and left a grinning skull.Except it's just Horrorland magic, the famous kind which is never ever explained. Can we go now?
Who remembers Bootleg Zoltar, alias Madame Doom, from Help, We Have Strange Powers? No? Not you? Well, she's back. And is a person now. Did the Goosebumps universe break again? As Meg wonders if the Tunnel of Screams was the scariest ride there (The Octonauts' Rollercoaster Adventure is scarier than the Tunnel of Screams! There are rides that make Rita look like a pleasant monorail, and you pick The Tunnel of Screams?), Bootleg Zoltar's humanoid form beckons her and Chris into her tent. Ooh-eck. Madame Doom is about as funny as William Shakespeare at his Mum's funeral, unlike Chef Belcher and Mondo. I wouldn't mind that so much, but there's nothing to make her interesting. She just asks Meg if she believes in dark magic, in a young girl's heart, and hands her a voodoo doll that looks exactly like her. Pass it, it's nothing to do with this open fire next to me, I swear. Meg drops the doll and bends down to pick it up, and when she sits back up again, Madame Doom has vanished into the shadows (she is Batman).
Meg and Chris leave (what about if Bootleg Zoltar just went to get some tea?), and ask a nearby Horror if he's seen Madame Doom. He politely tells them that she's in the opposite direction of the house, and they discover Madame Doom's true, Bootleg Zoltar form of a fortune teller booth. They press the silver button, and a card drops out of the machine, advertising Chiller House. While Jonathon may not be a good salesman, he's got some cracking advertisements.
So, Meg and Chris go to Chiller House. Facebook must love these 2, since they seem to be unrealistically susceptible to ads. The first thing they discover is a giant safety pin, labelled as 'King Kong's Diaper Pin.' OK, that's pretty funny. As Meg is looking over an Eye-bacus (3 guesses), Jonathon Chiller enters, doing his thing and being a generally great character. Meg picks up a doll that looks like the physical form of JB Priestly's idea of capitalism and is called the Floig, and exposits about how she collects dolls. So, she buys it. Well, I say "buy;" Chiller just gives it to her for free and the little Horror doll. I've run out of ways to say that he's a terrible businessman at this point.
PART 2-Close Encounters of the Worst Kind
Meg and Chris's parents are off to Chicago, so, instead of taking the kids with them, they just let their old, 118 year old babysitter, Penny, look after the kids. At home, we discover Meg's doll collection. Because this is what we read these books for, right? there's this 300 year old doll called Elisabeth (don't worry, she doesn't come to life), and-you know what? Nobody cares, let's cut our losses and skip the rest of the scene.
The next day, Mum and Dad go off to Chicago, and Penny comes over. There's nothing good in this scene either (this is starting to remind me of something), so let's skip ahead once more.
Meg and Chris, dressed as a vampire and a Vulcan (God dammit) respectively, head to their friend Kelly's Halloween party. They get into an argument over Meg's crush (How the hell does Chris know who that is?), when they suddenly spy something shaped like a baby in the bushes. And it's alive. It appears to be a kid dressed up as an alien baby, wearing a t-shirt and a diaper. And he laughs like Spongebob. Then Meg and Chris just abandon the seemingly lost and alone child to continue on their way to Kelly's party. However, when they get their, they find that the kid has followed them. Then Kelly's dog leaps at it... but then freezes in place. As Kelly comes out to see what the whole thing's about, the kid appears to have disappeared (he is Batman).
At the party, Meg bumps into her friend, Carlos, who's got a pretty cool costume - a 2-headed alien. He is apparently a science-fiction geek, since only science-fiction geeks can dress up as aliens. I'd better add that to my list of arbitrary Goosebumps rules. Then the party is quickly summed up, and it sounds pretty fun (even so, I don't care about writing it), and they start telling ghost stories. Carlos takes the heads off of his costume, and begins to tell the tale of The Headless Ghost. The one that lives in Kelly's basement. But, before we can get into all of the juicy stuff about what it does, the lights all go out, and there's a smash. Oh no, Brandon's back! Someone switches them back on, where they find a package on the floor and one of the windows being broken. Kelly opens the package, where an aroma that smells like the current Brexit negotiations fills the room, sending everyone choking and whatnot. Man, there's nothing they won't do to take out the Russian spies nowadays.
As they clean up, Meg starts to try and deduce who would do it. But don't worry, we find out who did almost instantaneously, as Meg and Chris get home: it was the alien kid from earlier! The kid calls it an 'Aroma Message.' Yeah, I feel like that could've worked in literally any other context. The kid is actually an alien, called Bim. Bim is... well, imagine if Jar Jar's brain was removed and placed into a small tangerine and was then glued to a larger tangerine in a robot exoskeleton. And then was combined with 1200006 Tumblr fangirls. Bim thanks them for saving him, though they point out that all they did was pull him out of a hedge. However, Tangerine Jar Jar is still incredibly happy, so Chris tells him to get out. He grabs Bim by the pits, tries to throw him out of the door... and accidentally throws him at the ceiling instead. Bim, unfortunately, seems right as rain. I miss Matt Daniels' limelight stealing. In fact, I genuinely think he needs to come and do that to get rid of Bim.
Meg tries to pull Bim's mask off, but there is no mask. I suppose that the shop from The Haunted Mask's back in business. Yes, Bim is really an alien. Shock horror. Thing from The Addams Family's court order will be in the mail. Chris asks why he's here, but even Bim can't remember. Then he pukes a dead bird onto Meg's bird. Suddenly, Penny comes in (oh yeah, she's in this story) and sees the fusion of BritainFirst's manifesto and birds, but Meg quickly dismisses it as a prank someone did. And Bim is merely their friend, Max. Penny buys this because she has the intelligence of a UKIP MP, and she leaves. Then Bim eats the dead bird again. Nice. And apparently this was the third time he'd regurgitated the bird and eaten it. There is some creative moments with Bim, but it's always spoiled by the fact that it's, well, Bim. "Go away," say Meg and Chris, causing Bim to get mad.
And then he opened his mouth in a bellowing roar: "DON'T MAKE MY FEELING UNHAPPY!"Boy, this isn't what I thought the next Hulk movie would be like. Tangerine Jar Jar grabs the 300-year old doll, Elisabeth, and acts like he's going to eat it. Meg pleads for him not to do so, and Bim obliges... and grabs a doll from the 1930s. And eats it. Any more, and you won't want your tea! Then Bim uses Elisabeth to blackmail Meg into giving him a back rub. Ewwww.... I'm starting to regret making this a 2-parter. After we have to read about Meg giving a sentient tangerine a back-rub, Bim takes all the books off the bottom shelf of the bookcase, and sleeps on it. They come up with the idea of calling their parents, but quickly realise that they wouldn't believe them anyway. Goodness me, logic!
The next morning, Meg wakes to find that Bim has disappeared from the bookshelf. She scours the room for him, but there's no sign of him. He's gone.
Meg goes back to her room to shout at Bim some more, because that's gone well every time she's tried it. However, when she gets there, all of her dolls have been chewed to powder. Dammit, Bim! You're not going to want your tea after that! Whilst I'm not that sad about the dolls, it's very nicely conveyed how much Meg is. Also, any more excuses to hate Bim are very welcome.
Meg calls Carlos for advice. Because that went so well last time. Carlos points out that there's a chance that Bim eats human flesh as well, though his only real evidence for this is that is that Bim is from outer space. Is the twist that Carlos is Henry Bolton? They have a conversation that goes nowhere, when Bim shows up and makes Meg give him another back rub. Then he reveals that he's invited loads of his alien buddies over. Oh no. Meg finally agrees to follow Chris's plan of losing him at a Halloween party. So, the plan is just to let the flesh eating alien who only feasts on living meat into an extremely crowded enviroment?
Meg gets back in the vampire costume, but Chris loses his Spock ears, so, instead of just gonig as Bones instead, he paints his face green, puts on a green jumper, and goes as a frog. So, they take Bim on an incredibly convoluted route to the Halloween party, all whilst Tangerine Jar Jar expresses his excitement over the living meat. Yeah, again, this is a terrible plan for that reason. So, they eventually wind up at this random house where a Halloween party is happening. Yeah, they don't know who it is. Of course! Bim'll be too leathered to ever find his way back! (Though now I'm imagining him waking up the next morning next to one of the robot girls he was talking to.)
Meg and Chris go home, where Kelly and Carlos are waiting for them. Yeah, in the heat of getting Bim out of the house, they forgot all about going trick-or-treating. Phew! For a minute there, I thought they'd forgotten something important! However, when they nip up to Meg's room, Bim's still there. And he's not even slightly boozed up. Drat. Bim apparently has Weirdo tracking, whatever that is. This whole thing has made Bim's feeling very unhappy, so he doesn't start bouncing off the walls so much as smahing them up with his head. Penny comes in and shouts at him, making him seem to shink. So, Meg, Chris, Kelly, and Carlos start insulting Bim too. I want in on this. Hmmm.... I'd compare Bim to 50 Shades of Grey (the franchise, not just the 1st book), but that'd be too harsh on EL James. The insult throwing ends with Meg and Chris telling Bim to get off the planet for good. Bim responds by turning into Red Hulk. They lock Penny in Chris's bedroom for safety, and Bim chases Meg, Chris, Kelly, and Carlos round the house. After a pretty thrilling chase round the house, they wind up in Meg's bedroom. They start throwing books at Bim, but nothing works. He's unstoppable. I'm going to wake up, I'm going to wake up! They run out of books, so, as a last ditch effort, Meg grabs the floig (oh yeah, that's in this story), and chucks it at Bim. He catches it and... cuddles it. Turns out that the floig was Bim's childhood toy, and he came to Earth to look for it. Yeah, this doesn't make me hate him any less. HE MADE KELLY'S LIFE A LIVING HELL AND DESTROYED THE THINGS THAT MEG LOVED MOST IN THE WORLD... FOR A TOY. Luckily, the floig makes Bim homesick, so he goes home. Party at my place to celebrate, guys! (Bring your own drinks).
And, thus, everything's lovely once again. Wonderfantasmazing. Meg goes to bed, when another Bim emerges. And another. And another. Suddenly, the room is crawling with them. They've shown up for the back rubs. (*Deep breath*) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Extra Toppings
Kelly and Meg somehow both managed to show up to the Halloween party wearing the exact same vampire costume.
Bim is apparently only 3. If that's how annoying 3-year olds are on his planet, I dread to think what Corbyn supporters there are like.
Conclusion
The first part of Weirdo Halloween has been... painful. Not that there's anything wrong with most of the characters. They emote very convincingly, and are kind of likeable. No, the problem is BIM. I get that they're trying to make him annoying, but they went way overboard incredibly quickly. He makes Brandon Plush look like the Pope. He makes Matt Daniels look like Carly Beth. He makes Stephanie Meyer-you know what, I'd better stop. Bim somehow managed to ruin the entire first half of this book for me, and that is definitely not a good sign. If you can put up with Bim, though, I suppose it's alright so far.
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