5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Say Cheese and Die review by Sissy, November 15, 2001
By A Customer
Have you ever heard of a camera that can tell the future? Well if you haven’t, you should ask a boy named Greg how that is. One day Greg and his friends, Shari, Michael, and Bird, were fooling around, and wandered to the old Coffman house. This is an old, abandoned, haunted house. Once the four friends get to the house, they realize where they were. They all dared each other to go inside. Strange eyes peer from a high up window, like glowing cat eyes. Those eyes belonged to Spidey, the Coffman House, housekeeper. He watches over the house, and keeps all wanderers away. As the children cautiously enter the house, they soon get lost in the huge, mysterious mansion. As these four, scared, lost friends, walk around, they find themselves lost in the basement. Greg, suddenly falls over this stuck out floorboard. There, they open it, and find and find an old, rustic, camera. They quietly look at it, and then go on, to doing something else. When Mike and the others are all dressed up in the clothes they had found, Mike suggests that Greg take a picture of him. After the photo came out, Mike started down the stairs, to see the picture, and how it turned out. Suddenly, they all see a big mass flying through the air. It’s Mike! How’d this happen, they didn’t know. After Greg, Shari, and Bird helped him up, they all stare at the photo in disbelief. The picture had shown Mike falling from the steps. Mike questioned how the photo came out with him falling, when Greg took the picture before he fell? None of them knew how to respond. They couldn’t believe what they had just seen, and witnessed.
Another day, on Shari’s birthday, she made Greg bring the camera over. He really didn’t want too, because he was afraid that something else bad might happen. When Greg got to her party, she insisted he took a picture of her, seeing as it was her day to rule, her birthday. As the photo came out, Shari, being so anxious, ripped the photo out of Greg’s hand, tearing it right in half. After that, she made him retake the photo, this time waiting for him to show her. As Greg showed her, her face turned blank, with astonishment. All four of the friends gathered around, all seeing the same thing Shari and Greg did. Shari, not in the picture, just the background of where she was, that’s all the picture showed. After they continued on with the birthday plans, they headed back into the house. Someone had noticed something wrong. Shari missing! Where was Shari? Many thoughts rushed through Greg’s mind: “What could’ve happened to her? Where is she right now? Is she okay?” What would Greg do if Shari never showed up? Soon the police were at Shari’s house, and they were searching though everything, trying to find her! The party quickly ended, and everyone had gone home. As Greg reached his house, no one was there. Where were they? Their new car wasn’t there either. What was going on? Earlier that day, before the party, Greg had taken a picture of the new car, and had just now remembered putting it in his back pocket. When he pulled it out, he saw it, a photo of their new car, all smashed up. Still holding the camera, Greg walked into the house, and into his room to find something horrid had happened. All of his belongings had been thrown about, his room a mess, all torn up. Suddenly, the phone rang, surprising Greg, causing him to jump. When Greg answered it, it was his mother. She told him that his father had been evolved in a serious car accident, and was now in the hospital. She also said that the new Station Wagon had been totaled! What would happen next, Greg wondered? Was it the camera doing all this evil?
After all of this happens, Greg starts getting weird ideas. What does this camera do? What do you think it does? The next day, out of nowhere, Shari turns up! She said to everyone, that she had just been wandering around in the woods with all of her friends at her party, and suddenly, she was in the middle of the woods all by herself. Then, this morning, she just remembered waking up in the back woods, and getting up, and going into the house. That was all that she remembered, and knew about. It all made sense to Greg at that moment. He took all of the photos he shot out, and he just looked at them, trying to find out what all of them had in common. Then it hit him, they were all pictures of what had happened after the photo was taken! He knew the answer to his question, what was this camera, and what did it do? It told the future!
Greg, Shari, Bird and Mike decided that they had to do something with the camera before it did something else to another innocent person. They had to take the camera back. Back to the rightful owner of this evil thing. They had to get rid of it, before it hurt someone else! Later on that day, the four friends went to the Coffman House. The thoughts of the camera made Greg think of Spidey. He wondered if this was his doings, and if he purposely tried to do something to them, to get back at them for taking the camera. Quietly, and carefully, they all sneaked in the house, as if they were little mice, passing a sleeping cat, and then down to the basement they went. Cautiously, they put the evil camera back, and started up the stairs. Ah! Spidey was at the top, glaring down at them viciously, attempting to come after them. The children, quaking nervously, looked up frightened to death, wondering what to do, all looked at one another, and ran. Shoving Spidey over, they all flew out the front door, desperately trying to save their lives. What would happen next? What would Spidey do to them, when he caught them? To know, you’ll have to read the rest of the book! (...)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Snapshot of Small Town Horror, November 19, 2006
Say Cheese and Die is the fourth book in the Goosebumps series and in this volume we meet four friends who live in Pitts Landing (Greg, Shari, Michael, and Doug) and as we join them they are hanging out in a driveway lamenting how lame (and incredibly boring) Pitts Landing is...as they wander down the street desperately trying to come up with something interesting to do...when they encounter the old Coffman house and decide that the best way to beat the days doldrums is to sneak into to this creepy and abandoned house and have a look around and that's when all the trouble starts.
Down in the basement they discover that Spider (a creepy homeless guy known around town for dressing all in black) is living there and Greg makes an extra special discovery...a hidden cabinet and a camera. When Spider unexpectedly crashes their little adventure the foursome scram out of there with the camera. Greg and gang figure finders-keepers...but there's something not quite right about the camera...every picture that Greg takes with it comes out wrong. It isn't until later that the group begins to discover just exactly how special the camera is and exactly what horrible fate is in store for them as a result of using it. Will they be able to right what is wrong? What will Spider do to them? You'll have to read to find out!
Overall I liked Say Cheese and Die, though it suffers from the same drawbacks that other books in this series suffer. The stories are so short that characterization is all but nonexistent and the build up happens really, really fast. I suppose that this is good, considering the age range for the stories and the ending does have the characteristic twist that Stein seems to strive for in all of his works. I give it a B+.
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