Film Review : R. L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead 2 (2026)

Well after such a shockingly good first one, R. L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead 2 doesn’t quite live up to the first one.

Taking place a year after the end of the first movie, Sam is still in search of the book to reverse this curse. In the mean time he has moved in with Rusty as a foster parent since his family forgot that he existed. Navigating this life alongside Becka still the book soon resurfaces finding its way to Evan, their friend who is living in less than stellar conditions and dreams of having friends and family.

From here an army of pumpkinhead children are spawned and its up to the kids along with the help of a new found librarian to try once and for all to reverse this for good.

The addition of the librarian here, played by horror legend Cassandra Peterson (Elvira), is a nice addition though also makes the story here more convoluted. We move past the pumpkin monsters themselves now moving more into a witchcraft type story.

My only other issue here really is the dialog especially for the children. It just doesn’t feel natural at all with some of their lines making me question out loud who wrote this as it doesn’t sound similar to how any child would actually talk.

Overall this sequel is fine. Its not as scary per say as the first one but the children pumpkin creatures have a nice design to them and get some good screen time. With the news that 2027 will bring another R.L. Stein book to Tubi for a full length film I’m just happy and hopefully that this continues for a long time.

Score :

2.5 / 5