‘Goosebumps: The Vanishing’ VFX Stay Grounded Even as Its Horrors Take Flight

“Goosebumps” returned for its second season on Hulu and Disney+ January 10 — and even for an anthology series, the new season felt worlds away from the creepy haunted house aesthetic of Season 1. Sorry, Slappy: “Goosebumps: The Vanishing” 2 is all about body horror.

Well, not just body horror. But as twin teen New Yorkers CeCe and Devin discover, investigating a haunted fort from their botanist father’s traumatic childhood doesn’t typically end well. Although their dad (played by David Schwimmer) might be the one who learns that lesson most thoroughly when one sneeze dislodges his eyeball. Watch the video above to find out how the cast and creators tackled a new season of scares.

 ”We were still just finishing Season 1 when talk about Season 2 came up,” senior visual effects supervisor Lawren Bancroft-Wilson told IndieWire in a separate interview. “Pretty much anything that [co-creator] Rob Letterman does, it has to be real and grounded, and everything has to feel very real. It’s grounded, but it’s ‘Goosebumps.'”

 ”Just for the example of [Episode 4] ‘Monster Blood, if you read the book, it was very green, more of a caricature,” visual effects supervisor Carlo Monaghan told IndieWire of the voracious blob that grows and grows. “When we get into the effects, it has to be believable textures and how it looks and reacts to the environment. We didn’t want it to feel like it was cartoony. It had to be very photoreal and believable.”

That’s a tall order for a season that encompasses an alien life form taking over David Schwimmer’s veins to that dangling eyeball to a group of quadruped aliens. Not to mention the strange creatures lurking at the old abandoned fort on the outskirts of Brooklyn. It’s a huge melange of horror needs, and all of it remains as relatable as CeCe and Devin rolling their eyes at dad jokes.

 ”There’s Cronenberg-esque stuff, there’s alien stuff, and then you get them all together, and they all have to come from a cohesive place, right?” Bancroft-Wilson said. “That was one of the things that Carl and I probably dealt with Weta FX right away, with concept designs, and with Rob, is that they all had to come from that same core place.”

And that place is darker and creepier than one might expect from a series on Disney+. But no one pushed to tone it down. “I’ve worked on shows that are definitely aimed at older audiences and ones that are aimed at younger audiences,” Bancroft-Wilson said. “And I would say, even from last year to this year, that there was never really pushback. To be honest, like the bulb coming out of [Schwimmer’s] arm. I’m so amazed we’re allowed to do that because that’s really gross. That is pure Cronenberg.”

There was also a found-footage episode that required extensive planning. “ That was a bit of a panic mode because we’re used to shooting 4k high-resolution stuff to put out visual effects in,” Monaghan said. “And then we’ve got this very degraded 720p resolution, and technically, that was very challenging. And that was something we had to problem solve, do a bit of research on.”

But even as the story takes a wilder and more deadly turn, the special effects remain resolutely grounded — something that ratchets up the tension even more. Much of that comes down to the actors having something that unifies their reactions.

“We always strive to have something on set that’s practical that they can react to, interact with,” Bancroft-Wilson said. “And also for the cameramen as well, just being able to have something to look at and frame to. It’s a kind of a nice fun for just the energy on set, a nice ‘wow’ factor.”

Both seasons of “Goosebumps” are streaming on Hulu and Disney+.