Movie Review: Monster House

Monster House 

Columbia Pictures, Relativity Media, ImageMovers, Amblin Entertainment, Sony Pictures Animation, USA, 2006. 

Angry old geezer Horace Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi) lives in a scary house. DJ (Mitchel Musso) spies on him, "Rear Window" style. His best friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) is waiting for Halloween, but DJ is not interested. DJ's parents leave babysitter punk rocker girl Zee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) to watch DJ. 

Nebbercracker

DJ and Chowder

Zee and Bones

When Nebbercracker is hospitalized, the house starts eating people including Zee's rocker dude boyfriend Bones (Jason Lee ). The boys decide to solve the mystery of the house with a smart girl Jenny (Spencer Locke). Arcade game geek Reginald 'Skull' Skulinski (Jon Heder) provides the kids some information about possessed houses. Silly super duper cops do not believe the kids but they try to check the house and it goes badly. The kids solve the tragic mystery regarding Circus Fat Lady (Kathleen Turner). 

Angry house

Jenny

Reginald 'Skull' Skulinski

Animation looks great, not aiming to be realistic but cartoonish. As produced by adventure film maestros Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg this has the feeling of 1980s comedic horror adventures where suburban kids suspect something creepy is going on in the neighbourhood. "Burbs", "The Gate", or "The Poltergeist" aren't too far off from it. Well, no one really dies in "Monster House" but the film is quite edgy and the house looks scary so I wouldn't recommend it for smaller kids. However the scares are balanced by comic characters and witty dialogue. Toward the end some sentimentality is added. Mr. Nebbercracker isn't really an evil person, but a lonely guy who is trying to protect the kids from the house. However it does not quite reach the emotional impact of for example Tim Burton's films. As such it is an entertaining spooky Halloween-story in the spirit of 1980s mainstream horror films.

The cops

Scared pumpkins

Rating: Good 

Voice actors: Ryan Newman, Steve Buscemi, Mitchel Musso, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard, Sam Lerner, Woody Schultz, Ian McConnel, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Lee, Spencer Locke, Kevin James, Nick Cannon, Jon Heder, Kathleen Turner, Erik Walker, Matthew Fahey, Brittany Curran, Marc Musso 

Director: Gil Kenan