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Sep 21, 2018 · An entertaining PG detour for gore maestro Eli Roth, The House with a Clock in Its Walls is a family-friendly blend of humor and horror with an infectious sense of fun. Read Critics...
- (856)
- Eli Roth
- PG
- Jack Black
Sep 20, 2018 · But the plot—about Lewis ( Owen Vaccaro ), a newly orphaned pre-teen who becomes a powerful warlock with some help from kooky uncle Jonathan ( Jack Black )—is mostly adequate. And the scene-to-scene pacing is patient enough to establish the importance of certain key plot points and character dynamics.
Sep 20, 2018 · 'The House With a Clock in Its Walls' Review: Son of a Witch. TV & Movies. ‘The House With a Clock in Its Walls’ Review: Thrills, Chills and Jack Black. Black,...
Sep 18, 2018 · By Harry Windsor. September 18, 2018 6:00am. Eli Roth shows himself unafraid of chronic neck pain with The House With a Clock in Its Walls, pivoting from March’s tepidly received...
- The final act saves the film.
- Verdict
By Witney Seibold
Posted: Sep 19, 2018 6:46 pm
The House with a Clock in Its Walls is possessed of a sprightly, featherweight tone that can only be described as Spielberg-extra-lite. It features familiar Amblin iconography like warm suburban photography (by Rogier Stoffers), a wide-eyed moppet protagonist, a lot of kid-friendly humor, and the type in-depth exploration of a secret world of magic that is so well-worn that it's lost all its tread.
The House with a Clock in Its Walls is missing a lot of vital charm and genuine wonderment that its genre so thirstily requires and is so rarely rewarded with. It's not until the film's final act – when puppet automatons spring to life, jack-o'-lanterns attack, and zombies begin stalking the halls – that it really begins to breathe and excite. Perhaps this approach should come as no surprise, as the film was directed by Eli Roth, the gore-hungry auteur behind The Green Inferno and the Hostel movies. Even when working on a PG-rated film for young audiences, Roth is more interested in the scary bits.
Based on the 1973 Young Adult fantasy novel written by John Bellairs and illustrated by Edward Gorey, The House with the Clock in Its Walls takes place in 1955 in New Zebedee, MI. Our story's young goggle-wearing and linguaphile hero Lewis (Owen Vaccaro), recently orphaned by a car crash, is to move in with his eccentric uncle Jonathan Barnavelt (Jack Black) a one-time stage magician and local kook who lives in the neighborhood “haunted mansion” the wonderfully designed eponymous edifice that looks a lot like, well, Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, and that holds a dark secret left behind by the possibly-dead and definitely evil Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan). Almost immediately, Barnavelt reveals himself to be an actual warlock, and it won't take more than a single plea for Lewis to begin his lessons in the dark arts. Adding a much-needed shot of adult gravitas to the proceedings is Florence Zimmermann (Cate Blanchett, the film's MVP) a once-talented European witch who has lost her will to cast.
As long-time students of the Amblin milieu, modern audiences – adults and kids alike – will likely feel something is missing from The House with a Clock in Its Walls, and it won't take long to recognize that we're running low on bedazzlement. Rather than slowly discovering the world of magic and warlocks and enormous houses full of taxidermied animals and spooky automatons, the audience is marched through the introductory paces with something of a perfunctory glance. Lewis, while given a few superficial interests and vague personality traits, never quite emerges as the true weirdo the film declares him to be.
An exciting and scary final act makes up for a middling kid horror fantasy that is marked by a slow start and an inappropriately comedic tone.
- Witney Seibold
Sep 18, 2018 · Sep 18, 2018 6:00am PT. Film Review: Jack Black in ‘The House With a Clock in Its Walls’. Horror director Eli Roth ('Hostel') tones down the intensity of his scares in service...
Eli Roth's aged-down spookfest has jump-worthy scenes. Read Common Sense Media's The House with a Clock in Its Walls review, age rating, and parents guide.
