User Reviews

As a 90s kid who grew up reading and watching the Goosebumps series, I was very willing to try out this new Disney + Anthology series inspired by the writings of R. L. Stine. I have tried going back and watching the old Goosebumps as an adult and the experience is ok at best. It's really hard to re-live those childhood scares and feeling of intrigue as an adult because time has made the tropes, effects and acting cheesy by modern standards. However, past attempts to re-boot Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark, So Weird and other spooky kids classics have not faired so well, until recently. I was skeptical whether this would be good, but it seems the world of kids TV is taking a cue from adult television and determining that television should actually be well written. Though this was not the best piece of child friendly cinema I've seen recently (highly recommend the 2019 "Are You Afraid of the Dark" series on Netflix), it was surprisingly watchable. I am a full-blown adult so kids shows are not going to have the same effect on me as say a show like "American Horror Story" or "The Haunting of Hill House," but if I had kids I would definitely think of this as their version of shows like that. Especially the former as this is also an Anthology. The story was super short, but it got a lot done in the condensed state. I felt like I got a really good sense of the two main characters, though the side characters and the villainess were really lacking in development. I would have loved to learn more about the Headmistress and how/why she became the way she is. That was lacking and honestly I would have rather them take more time to develop her if they had to, or just tightened their writing further to have her explain herself, and add a little twist. Just anything to make her less one dimensional. Even with those one-dimensional characters, they still surprised me with just how much development of the children's characters there was in such a short span. We saw her friend at school for 5 seconds and we knew what kind of character she was, same with the girls at the new school who helped Veronica (main character) with her plot. It's not the best writing ever, but its pretty clever and does a great job in a short time, which is quite a challenge to do with a kids show without making it cheesy. So bravo to this first episode which surprisingly was not cheesy, had likable characters, great child actors and was very watchable even for a full-blown adult!

The rebirth of the teenager after post World War Two and the subsequent creation of Rock n' Roll during the mid-nineteen fifties gave this new, contemporary, phenomenon of youthful adolescence the time, the resources and the angst to rebel against that contradicted its form of identity and free-will. It is here, with Leave Those Kids Alone, that mid-fifties youth culture has fast-forward to 21st century woes and the same-old-rope of generation-gap confliction and bringing fresh teenage apprehension of world issues as environmental trepidations has spread the wings of the 21st century teenager into a world larger than its own self-importance; rock n' roll has finally grown up.

Veronica is a sprightful young teenage girl whose aspirations go beyond the perpetual cycle of growing pains of childhood and whose youthful spirit transcends into individuality and expression of free-will within the realms of independent thought. Withstanding the clashes of ageism, from all perspectives, set alongside this youthful mindset, sets the theme of hegemony against autonomy and the system that constitutes to these opposing opposites. The system, departing from the primary system of Home, the epicentre of nature versus nurture, it is the secondary system of education, the system of nurture rather than nature that Leave Those Kids Alone sets its scene. The all-girl school has the best of the worst in rebellious attitude and we are shown how its writers' have used this environment to perpetuate this dilemma of both nonconformity and indoctrination to the point of seeing the indoctrination of a much deeper, and sinister, social programming of a homogenous society.

The Production setting predates the contemporary train-of-thought; no one seems to know exactly what Vegan is and the girls' Flip Bob hairstyle most certainly goes back to an era of dated norms; sex, race, styles and education, albeit, rebellion never gets stale. The overall concept shows a smooth visual narrative that given first impressions all is polished and refined; a ploy of the Production to entrap its viewer into a world of comfortable-compliance. The whole set-up is a trap to enhance all participants to the feeling of tranquillity of a system that only addresses the dark side of thought control and dominance over fledging minds. The timeline of the concept of social-control has raged through the millennia and its forms of rebellion has entered many forms; protest, art, the written word, film, styles and music; Leave Them Kids Alone has shown the way in which a political system pushes its agenda and, in particular, how, to taint the girls' personality with ideology and their resistance to this dogma; there just may be a breakthrough at the end of the tunnel, to the tune of song.

The current theme here is freedom of choice and the ways in which Mr. Webb has illustrated his visual theme of the undistinguishable is rather disturbing. It seems that as Veronica is thrusted into this new training programme it is her actual parents' that can see the faults around them, question them as they do; ultimately, in the end, they have become too timed to act and immune, sterile and dulled to the fact that all around lurks an underbelly of a sinister agenda; all for the greater good? This equates to Veronica also, pulling no punches to express her new-found-agenda of mass protest, and her seemingly naïvety to save the world, at her own expense, she, too, in her naïf, but commendable, way is deaf, dumb and blind to how exactly the wider world works. The paradox here is the fact as she tries her personnel agenda it is really a case of it is not what is done but in the way in which it can also be done that that placed her in the further-education programme; the same but different?

What is of interest here is the use of the two main themes of teenage importance; hair and music. Hair and music, within the youth culture, are the extension of personality and symbolism of rebellion from the norm. The writers' have used this symbolism on uniformed hair styles, and dress, to perpetuate the battle of individuality. There are many youths' sub-cultures that have adopted their own brand of hair style; punks, teddy boys, skinheads, heavy metal and New Romantics for example have all personalised their hair and the way in which they wish to be perceived, too, songs and theatre plays have addressed Hair as a form of uniqueness; the 1967 stage play "Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical", The Who's 1973 "Cut My Hair" and "Get a Haircut" by George Thorogood & the Destroyers, in 1993, for example. It is important to understand that the unvaried style here goes beyond face value. We are seeing the clone effect of both mind and soul through a system of oppression. Leave Those Kids Alone is more than a title it is a frank warning to unclip the wings of free-will.

The unclipping of wings has a second ally; Music. We see during the opening sequence many young heads wired for sound and Miss Genevieve's school has banned music from its repertoire. Leave Those Kids Alone seemingly, allegedly, may takes its title from the British 1979 protest, anti-school, song "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" by the British rock band Pink Floyd where the "children" sing against a system, where they dispel the "...thought control...", of a meat grinding homogenous education system. Music here, too, is much more a tool against a system of repression. Rock n' Roll has been used here to subjugate the evil that men do and to inform, enhance and release the naïf mind from its supposedly caged state; The message of Leave Those Kids Alone? The essence of Rock n' Roll.

I wasn't really blown away with this series opener. As someone who loves anthology TV shows (particularly ones from the 90's), I was quite excited to see this episode, but by the halfway point, I was slowly losing interest. The 'brain-washing boarding school' premise has been done to death in recent years, and it's something I've seen countless times before in other horror based shows for kids. Are You Afraid of the Dark did its own version of this with "The Tale of the Hatching" in the early 90's. Goosebumps, too, attempted the exact same plot with "The Perfect School" a few years later. These two stories entertained me more than "Leave Them Kids Alone" unfortunately.

The story was also played too straight. No twists or plot developments that could've made this episode stand out from other versions of this tale, which is a shame. Just nothing memorable or new. Mckenna Grace, though, was solid and relatable as the lead, and I wish more was done with her character.

Still, it was a piece of clean entertainment for the whole family, which gives it some points. However, if you're looking for a better executed telling of an evil boarding school story, try elsewhere. Leave this episode alone!

Goosebumps did this exact story in 1996. And they did it better. They just take their stories from old TV shows. What's next? A new show about this Harry who goes to Hogwarts ? Or a new sitcom about a girl from Tennessee moving to California "Hannah Montana 2"?