Monster House (2006)

Kenan directs with a zingy sense of kids, comedy, fright, and visual perspective. But the movie also shimmers and shakes in all its motion-capture animated beauty with the slyly deep sensibilities of executive producer Robert Zemeckis.

Easily the best computer-animated feature to come from Hollywood in a long while, Monster House is also one of the weirdest. A creepy-crawly, freak-show Halloween yarn.

Becomes one of those wonderfully weird adventure stories beloved of children who don't mind getting a good old-fashioned case of the heebie-jeebies. It's kind of a blast for adults too.

Director Gil Kenan has a feel for dizzying "camera" work, and the screenplay combines witty gags with a sweet, albeit familiar, suggestion that kids shouldn't be in any great hurry to be anything but kids.

Set around Halloween, Monster House manages to cull bits and pieces from Hammer, Hitchcock and the old-dark-house genre of 19th Century literature and early 20th Century stage and film.