Directed by Eli Roth Starring Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Owen Vaccaro If you’re expecting The House with a Clock in Its Walls to adopt a subversive take on the children’s fantasy-horror genre just because shockmeister Eli Roth, the demented auteur behind Hostel, Cabin Fever, and The Green Inferno, is attached as director, then the movie is bound to disappoint you. Based on an obscure 1973 novel by John Bellairs, House with a Clock (even its abridged-for-review-purposes title is unwieldy) feels like a Frankenstein monster cobbled from other better fantasy-horror entries. And like that monster, the movie lumbers on witlessly. House with a Clock begins when an orphan named Lewis (Owen Vaccaro, whose sweet and heartbroken performance is undermined by the filmmakers’ insistence that he always wear pilot goggles and a bowtie for no good reason) comes to live in 1950s Michigan with his uncle, a magician/warlock named Jonathan Barnavelt (Jack Black) who is estranged from the rest of the family. Soon after meeting the next-door neighbour, a purple-clad ex-magician named Mrs. Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) with a habit of trading good-natured barbs with his uncle, Lewis soon notices strange goings-on at the mansion: a stained glass window at the landing keeps changing its picture, an overstuffed chair behaves like a dog, and his uncle spends his nights looking for a clock ticking in the house’s secret bowels…a clock that may be ticking down to the end of the world. Jack Black and Cate Blanchett The script, by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke, throws everything from Harry Potter to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy to Goosebumps into the pot. Still, the resulting movie is bland and generic—at this point, it doesn’t show you anything you haven’t seen or experienced before. The Goosebumps influence is particularly unfortunate, because Jack Black basically replicates his exasperated and vaguely befuddled R.L. Stine persona here; the one novel sight gag involves Black’s adult face on the body of a baby—a joke that was more wittily and less disturbingly executed in the two Deadpoolmovies. (Given that Ryan Reynolds’ makeup made him look like “an avocado that had sex with another avocado”, that’s really saying something.) House with a Clock’s one bright spot is Cate Blanchett, who plays her witch harbouring a secret heartache with breezy elegance. When she tells Black to shave his back or calls him a dumb hippo, the one-liners land with the airy effortlessness of a croissant. Her performance is the only tasty tidbit in this flavourless movie.<doc-sep>The director Eli Roth has previously indulged his cinephilia with gory exploitation throwbacks (“Hostel”), but in “The House With a Clock in Its Walls,” he makes a nostalgic fun house movie geared toward a younger crowd, and it pays off. This screen version of a celebrated 1973 book by John Bellairs doesn’t have the sophistication of an adaptation like “Hugo,” but no film in which Cate Blanchett head-butts a vivified jack-o’-lantern could be entirely without merit. The movie has the pleasingly demented texture of early Tim Burton. It bears the logo of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin company and is seen from a Spielbergian child’s-eye view. After the deaths of his parents, Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) goes to live with his uncle, Jonathan (Jack Black), secretly a benevolent warlock. Jonathan is obsessed with finding a clock hidden in the house by its previous magic-dabbling occupant (Kyle MacLachlan). Lewis asks to apprentice.<doc-sep>“Movie magic.” That expression used to mean something quite different back when filmmakers relied on practical effects to make the impossible seem possible, and not every YA protagonist had dormant supernatural powers just waiting to be discovered. Yet another in a pipeline of vaguely Harry Potter-esque wish-fulfillment fantasies, Universal’s clunky but not entirely un-charming “The House With a Clock in Its Walls” makes enchantment so easy — and so ubiquitous — as to feel almost ordinary, being the all-too-familiar story of an orphan who picks up some nifty tricks when he goes to live in a house that ticks. Looking back, Amblin Entertainment — that Steven Spielberg-hatched shingle responsible for such films as “Gremlins” and “The Goonies” — may as well have defined the concept of movie magic for a generation, only to see it watered down by all the computer-generated juvenile thrill rides that followed. The Amblin-produced “House” may as well have been conceived as a throwback to what the label once represented: Like 1985’s darkly hallucinogenic “Young Sherlock Holmes” (whose trippy CG stained-glass sequence was a visual-effects breakthrough for its time), what presents itself as an ominous mystery is in fact a horror movie for kids. That explains why “House” — adapted by Eric Kripke from John Bellairs’ 1973 kid-lit classic — boasts as its director Eli Roth, the hard-R gorehound responsible for “Cabin Fever” and the “Hostel” movies. One might consider him too extreme for the assignment, yet Roth adapts his skills quite nicely to this project’s PG rating, delivering minor jolts where appropriate, and leaning on “Goosebumps” star Jack Black to leaven things with comedy throughout. If the idea was to give 8- to 12-year-olds a bit of a fright, maybe even to inspire a few mild nightmares, without doing any permanent damage, Roth is certainly up to the task. His “House” is big on atmosphere, full of doors with big brass locks and oversize rooms that intimidate 10-year-old Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro, both miscast and badly directed as someone Bellairs described as chubby and awkward), who has been sent to New Zebedee, Mich., after his parents’ death to live with his uncle Jonathan (Black, who earns laughs with the arch of an eyebrow or the peculiar enunciation of a word taken at random). Lewis’ new guardian is a kimono-wearing kook — and self-described warlock — who conducts himself like some kind of corny late-19th-century magician, complete with greased-back hair and penciled-on beauty mark. Gesturing grandly and delivering each line as if onstage, Jonathan introduces Lewis to the relatively elegant Mrs. Zimmerman, a lilac-clad sorceress (such costumes!) with a serpent’s tongue — the sort of role Tim Burton might have cast with his muse du moment (Lisa Marie or Eva Green or Helena Bonham Carter), and that Roth awards to Cate Blanchett, who relishes such a colorful opportunity without veering nearly so far into camp. Though Jonathan describes her as a “neighbor,” Mrs. Zimmerman appears to share the house — not that the particulars matter so much: The duo maintain an affectionately combative routine by which they trade insults, making for virtually the only amusing repartee in a film whose script otherwise seems to be working overtime to establish the not-especially-interesting mystery of its eponymous clock. It all hinges on an elaborate backstory involving the mansion’s previous residents, an evil wizard named Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan) and his wife Selena (Renée Elise Goldsberry), who both died/disappeared years earlier while trying to create a mechanism that could somehow wreak havoc on the forces of time. That couple may be long gone, but the treacherous timepiece remains, counting down somewhere inside the house, and though Jonathan has tried to cover its ticking with dozens of other clocks, late at night Lewis can hear the unmistakable sound of doomsday approaching. In the indeterminate interim, he’s delighted to discover that sorcery doesn’t require any special talent, just a willingness to study — yielding cute spell-casting montages that have little to do with where the plot’s ultimately headed. If things are weird at home, they’re not exactly copacetic at school, where Lewis (who wears a pair of vintage pilot’s goggles to P.E.) is the last person picked for basketball — even after the kid with crutches. Lewis tries to make friends with Tarby (Sunny Suljic, star of Jonah Hill’s upcoming “Mid90s”), the most popular kid in class, but that only leads to trouble. Big trouble, as Lewis goes so far out of his way to impress Tarby that he winds up breaking the one rule Jonathan set, stealing a forbidden book and using it to wake Izard’s corpse (which makes zero sense, when the film goes so far out of its way to establish how much he misses his parents — and who would be the more logical focus of such an incantation). At any rate, by resurrecting this Voldemort Lite, Lewis triggers the obligatory showdown in the house’s basement on the eve of an eclipse — all of which feels formulaic in the extreme and more than a little derivative of better Tim Burton movies, most notably “Beetlejuice.” While not terribly original, it would be fair to call the movie inventive, like one of those eccentrics who’s constantly pestering the patent office with what he thinks are fresh ideas, only to discover that someone else got there first. Together with production designer John Hutman and “Beauty and the Beast” VFX supervisor Louis Morin, Roth has brought to life a creepy mansion with surprises around every corner, many of which linger in the imagination long after the film has ended — from an anthropomorphic armchair that follows Lewis around like some kind of lonely old pet to the flatulent topiary griffin that keeps guard over the garden. Add to that the cadre of menacing jack-o’-lanterns out front and a room full of sinister-looking automatons that spring to life late in the film, and you’ve got plenty of supernatural supporting players to generate a few decent set-pieces. Whether today’s kids look back as fondly on “House” as their parents do on previous Amblin productions, only time will tell.<doc-sep>Cabin Fever. Hostel. Death Wish. Eli Roth’s résumé wouldn’t make him the most obvious candidate to adapt John Bellairs’s 1973 kid-lit classic The House With a Clock in Its Walls into a PG-rated romp, but the director best known for grisly horror and blood-soaked kills is clearly turning over a new leaf. “The idea was to do an old-school Amblin movie, but for a new generation,” said Roth (watch above), referring to the production company co-founded by Steven Spielberg that was behind ’80s classics like E.T., Gremlins, and The Goonies. Amblin Entertainment produces the new film version of House, which is about a boy (played by Owen Vaccaro) who moves in with his Uncle (Jack Black) in a sleepy Michigan town only to discover supernatural oddities in his new abode. “There was this world of PG scary movies that I just feel isn’t done anymore. It feels like kids’ movies now are either superhero movies and animated movies. And while that’s great, there isn’t a movie that if you love scary movies, you can take your kids to.” As Roth told Vaccaro, House With a Clock on Its Walls is a “gateway” horror movie. Cate Blanchett, the Oscar winner and mother of four who previously forayed into kids’ flicks with Disney’s 2015 hit Cinderella, plays the boy’s new neighbor, who, like his uncle, practices mystic arts. “Oftentimes, films say, ‘Let’s not show the monster under the bed.’ Kids need to see the monster under the bed. And it’s thrilling for parents to sort of revisit their own scares and fears that they had when they saw films in their childhood and go through that with your kids. Because I think kids are much more robust and excitable than we allow them to be in contemporary cinema.” Black, who last dabbled in children’s horror (chi-hor?) with 2015’s Goosebumps, says the approach isn’t any different when gearing scares for the preteen set. “We just approach it the same as you would any movie, whether its kids in the audience or grown-ups in the audience,” he said. “When they were making Raiders of the Lost Ark, were they thinking, ‘How do we keep this safe and sane for the kids?’ No, they’re like, ‘Let’s party! '” Story continues The House With a Clock in Its Walls opens Friday. Watch the trailer: Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:<doc-sep>
Eli Roth, specialist in horrifically gory and violent films, with films such as Hostel and Green Inferno in his CV, has decided to make the jump to directing more family-friendly fare with his new film, The House with a Clock in its Walls. Adapted from John Bellairs’ novel of the same name, it tells the story of young Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), who moves into his uncle Jonathan’s (Jack Black) unusual mansion. Lewis is introduced to a world of magic by his warlock uncle, and, with the help of Jonathan’s neighbor Mrs. Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) must find a clock hidden somewhere in the house and stop something horrible from happening. Entering Jonathan’s house for the first time, there is immediately a sense that something mystical is going on, shrouded in mystery. This part of the movie, where Lewis begins to experience odd noises at night, his uncle acting strangely, and cryptic messages in his dreams, is easily the best part of the movie. There’s genuine intrigue involved, and enough well-crafted moments of tension that won’t spook out kids too much. But then when the magic starts being introduced, you’d expect it to be, well, magical. But every magical tidbit in the house, things like a chair that acts like a dog, a topiary lion, a giant snake the production didn’t seem to have the CGI budget for, aren’t explored beyond “hey that’s cool/funny/weird.” That lion? It poops a lot. That’s its whole thing. And aside from one outdoor scene, we don’t get any shots of Lewis reacting in amazement to all the magic in the house. If our young protagonist isn’t impressed with any of it, why should you or your kids? And then there’s the third act. Look, I know that kids’ movies have silly humor. That’s just par for the course, and it entertains kids. But when a movie’s third act involves a race against time to quite literally save the world, the stakes evaporate very quickly when it has time for Jack Black doing pratfalls. Most of it consists of our trio getting past some bewitched obstacles to get to the villain and stop them, and while I imagine kids could find this exciting and fun, it’s not exactly a thrilling ride. The movie’s saving grace, though, is in its two adult leads. Jack Black is Jack Black, he’s funny as he always is, and has great chemistry with Vaccaro, but Blanchett’s the real show stopper. Seemingly allowed to have some fun in her performance, she mixes quirkiness with heart and an air of wisdom to bring her witch to life. One scene in particular with her character talking about family and what it means to be a parent is crushing, and is far beyond what this movie deserves. But then, the movie has their characters regularly banter with one another, and while this does serve a point for their character dynamic later in the film, the humor employed here is really quite dull. The House with a Clock in its Walls is definitely geared towards young children, rather than a more fun-for-the-whole-family approach. It’s definitely effective enough to occupy a child for about an hour and a half, but if you’re a parent, you should consider using this movie as an opportunity to teach your kids to be brave enough to watch movies in the cinema without you.