Cate Blanchett, Owen Vaccaro and Jack Black in The House with a Clock In Its Walls.
With Cabin Fever and two Hostel films on his resume, plus Knock Knock and the 2018 Death Wish remake too, Eli Roth has long made haunted house movies, in a fashion. In the director’s features spanning back 16 years, a roof over one’s head doesn’t equate to safety. When college kids head to a hut in the woods, they fall victim to a flesh-eating virus. When backpackers find a place to stay in Europe, their hosts are torturous rather than hospitable. When a man is home alone one night, terror comes calling at the door – and when a woman and her teenage daughter are in a comparable situation, they’re similarly attacked in their own abode.
This history both connects to and feels at odds with The House with a Clock In Its Walls, for while the movie follows the filmmaker’s recurrent thematic thread, it also sends him into fresh territory. Roth’s oeuvre and child-friendly features have never been paired before, and it indeed proves an odd fit. Bringing the first novel in a 12-strong series to the screen, the director’s latest initiates kids into the idea that a home can be more than a cosy space, particularly in strange and sometimes sinister ways. Of course, nightmarish funhouse films for younger viewers are hardly new, even if they are for Roth – and, with aims to start a family-oriented franchise always evident, the movie that follows smacks of easy, simplistic formula.
Through tragedy, ten-year-old Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro, Daddy’s Home 2) comes to live with his uncle Jonathan (Jack Black, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) in New Zebedee, Michigan. The latter was previously estranged from the rest of his family, and stepping into the creepy mansion that he calls home, it becomes apparent to Lewis why. Furniture comes alive, a stained glass window constantly changes, neighbour Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett, Ocean’s Eight) hovers around, clocks are everywhere and the house has a distinctive tick of its own, which Jonathan – who’s also a warlock – is trying to get to the bottom of.
Though Eric Kripke (TV’s Supernatural) based his screenplay on John Bellairs’ 1973 novel, The House with a Clock In Its Walls is a paint-by-numbers affair. Predictably, the aviator goggles-wearing Lewis is a lonely outsider trying to fit in, while Jonathan’s eccentricities have also made him stand out – and in their unconventional house, as well as on the quest that they both find themselves on, the two forge a bond. The broad strokes are apparent from the outset, in the type of film that endeavours to hide its generic nature through attention-grabbing detail. Alas, that detail – including busy special effects –remains just as unoriginal, especially for audiences versed in the eight Harry Potter movies and its Fantastic Beasts spin-off series, not to mention Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events or Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.
With its zany bumps and jumps, its focus on witchcraft and wizardry, and with Black ostensibly rehashing his recent Goosebumps turn, Roth does little to distinguish his entry into the growing cohort of child-focused fantasies. Here, nothing is overly funny or scary, and everything hews to the expected. The movie’s fondness for zipping from one magical sight to the next feels like a distraction technique more than an effort to flesh out The House with a Clock In Its Walls’ world, and its swift pace supports that suspicion. And although Vaccaro brings charm to his central performance, flying the flag for loving who you are and believing in yourself in the process, the film he’s in doesn’t take its own ideas to heart. The House with a Clock In Its Walls may be another of Roth’s haunted house offerings, albeit for much younger viewers, but it’s truly haunted by languishing in derivation and mediocrity.
2 stars ★★
The House with a Clock In Its Walls
Director: Eli Roth
US, 2018, 194 mins
Release date: September 20
Distributor: eOne
Rated: PG
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