Part 2 begins where part 1 left off, with Carly Beth violently shaking best friend Sabrina and yelling at her to shut up after Sabrina was nagging her about the mask. She then starts laughing, because the cheeky little devil is just playing a joke!
Sabrina isn’t impressed with her antics, but they continue on trick or treating anyway. At one house, Carly Beth threatens a little girl and her mother before snatching some candy and running off. Sabrina doesn’t like Carly Beth’s new personality and Carly Beth points out the mask made her do it, but she doesn’t exactly seem alarmed about the control this supposedly inanimate object has over her [Like, wouldn’t you be scared that it’s completely changing you? I guess she’s enjoying herself too much to really care, but some more explanation would have been nice]. Sabrina just wants to go home, but Carly Beth runs off into the night, determined to have fun and most importantly, get sweet, sweet revenge on Chuck and Steve.
Carly Beth continues to terrorise the neighbourhood, smashing pumpkins and growling at everyone. Eventually she wanders past the cemetery, where she overhears Chuck and Steve mucking around in their pirate costumes. She sneaks up and jumps out at them, but they quickly realise who she is. They also ask how she’s changing her voice, [Which is still a weird thing to ask when it’s such an easy thing to do???], but Carly Beth wants them to apologise to the plaster head, claiming that’s the real Carly Beth.
The boys are scared of Carly Beth’s animosity and admit they only tormented her because they like her [Boys will be boys lol] before apologising. That’s when the plaster head comes alive and starts begging for help, causing Carly Beth to drop it and the boys to run off. Elated by her success, Carly Beth starts howling at the moon [Did she forget what costume she’s wearing?] before burying it in a shallow grave and running off into the night [Besides dropping it when it talked, she doesn’t even acknowledge that it talked. Also, how is it even alive?].
Sabrina finally catches up to her and they head back to Sabrina’s house, where Carly Beth realises she can’t get the mask off. Sabrina tries to help, but realises there’s no longer a distinction between the mask and Carly Beth’s skin. Carly Beth scurries to the mirror to see for herself where she also notices that the eyes staring back aren’t hers [!!!!!]. Carly Beth runs straight back to the novelty store where the owner is expecting her.
He tells her he can’t remove the mask and gives us some much-needed exposition [That still doesn’t explain much]. Each of the six masks was beautiful in the beginning, but began to decay into these monstrosities over time. He calls them the Unloved Ones, because nobody would ever love them [Genius!] and explains that Carly Beth is the only one who’s ever wanted one, so the mask is Carly Beth’s face now [I don’t know about you but I still have a lot of questions about this situation].
Since Carly Beth has taken the mask off only once so far, he explains there may be a chance for her to remove it with a “symbol of love”. Carly Beth has no idea what he means and asks how he knows so much, and he confesses to creating the Unloved Ones to hide his own insecurities [And we all learned how to love ourselves more]. But his faults were on the inside, which infected the masks and made them what they are now [So is Carly Beth’s low self esteem and need for revenge infecting the mask now? Is that what’s going on? I’ve never picked up on that before, but I like the story better if that’s the case, and it makes much more sense]. In fact, the face he’s wearing at the moment is starting to decay too, and will soon join the others on the shelf [And that’s as much explanation as we get about him and the Unloved Ones].
Carly Beth’s throws a little tantrum and wakes up the other Unloved Ones, who then float off their stands and follow her as she runs away, begging her to join them [The special effects here are terrible hahaha].
[Look at that sassy little spin the front one does hahaha] Carly Beth eventually arrives at the cemetery and digs up the plaster head as the Unloved Ones circle her. She wards them off by screaming “This is Carly Beth! This is me!”, which makes the Unloved Ones disappear and Carly Beth is finally able to remove the haunted mask. She realises the plaster head was the symbol of love old mate mentioned [Huh? So what made her dig it up in the first place if she hadn’t already realised that?] and finally heads home, where her mother’s been worried sick about her.
Carly Beth apologises and reveals she’s had a weird night but has learned a lot about herself [We love character development!] without spilling the details. Suddenly, Noah appears wearing the mask in that classic Goosebumps twist ending that’s so prominent throughout the books.
We fade back to R.L. Stine, who concludes the episode by throwing to his parents, who were apparently terrified by Carly Beth’s story.
Final thoughts
This was a great story to kick off the TV series with, although it does seem much darker in tone than most other episodes, from memory. I think it could have benefitted from less telling and more showing, especially with Chuck and Steve’s pranks and Carly Beth’s fear of everything, just to drive the point home a bit more. I think showing a slightly more gradual shift in personality would have made it stronger too, because some of the impact is lost by having Carly Beth instantly more assertive and confident as soon as she wears the mask.
Rewatching as an adult, it also raises more questions than it answers – How was the plaster head alive? Where did the shop owner come from? Why did he set up a shop if he didn’t want customers? Why did he keep creating masks if he knew what would happen? What happened to the Unloved Ones after Carly Beth scared them away? Of course, none of these questions really matter, but I’m nosy and I want to know everything.
Carly Beth is a likeable protagonist that’s easy to root for, even when she’s being the villain, and although the plot might not necessarily be scary to some viewers, overall it’s a good two-part episode with a nice moral about loving yourself, flaws and all.
30 talking plaster heads out of 32!
