By John Corrado

★★½ (out of 4)

Are You Afraid of the Dark? Ghost Island is the third season in Nickelodeon’s reboot of the kids horror series from the 1990s, banking heavily on nostalgia while also appealing to a modern audience of tweenaged viewers.

Like the first two instalments of this limited series that began in 2019, Ghost Island – which premiered on TV last summer, and is now being released on DVD – focuses on a new cast of young characters who are all former members of a Midnight Society.

Kayla (Telci Huynh) is the group’s leader, who has decided to put an end to telling scary stories following the death of her twin sister. To take her mind off things, Kayla goes on vacation with her best friends Leo (Luca Padovan), Summer (Dior Goodjohn) and Ferris (Chance Hurstfield) to a tropical island.

It’s on this island where most of Ghost Island takes place, as the kids soon discover that the mysterious old hotel they are staying at is haunted, with much of the paranormal activity originating from behind the locked door of Room 13. All four episodes (The Tale of Room 13, The Tale of the Teen Spirit, The Tale of the Looking Glass, The Tale of the Other Side) are directed by Dean Isrealite, who also helmed the first instalment of this reboot, and he does a decent job of crafting another horror mini-series for younger audiences.

This is clearly a show made for adolescent viewers, with its middle school drama character arcs and mostly broad narrative strokes (as well as some occasionally cringey Gen Z dialogue). But Isrealite also establishes an appropriately creepy atmosphere right from the opening sequence (a surprisingly tense flashback to the 1980s), delivering some ghostly images and a few jump moments that will be pretty intense for the show’s young audience.

In this way, Ghost Island lives up to its potential as a piece of gateway horror (it’s almost like the kid-lit version of Netflix’s Haunting of Bly Manor), while also serving as a nostalgic throwback to the original ’90s show for older viewers. And if it borrows a lot of elements from other horror properties, it mostly gets away with it under the guise of homage meant to get more kids hooked into the genre. The result is a pretty good little horror anthology series aimed at younger viewers, that will be especially engaging for its target demographic of kids who want to watch something a little spooky.

Bonus Features (DVD):

The DVD includes no bonus features beyond the four episodes.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? Ghost Island is a Paramount Home Entertainment release. It’s 177 minutes and rated PG.

Street Date: August 1st, 2023