Storyline
Lewis Barnavelt, a shy but indomitable ten-year-old orphan, goes to live with his uncle Jonathan, a former entertaining magician, who hides too many creepy secrets, in a creaky old house with a mysterious tick-tocking heart which Jonathan is obsessed to find with the assistance of his enigmatic next-door neighbor Mrs. Zimmerman.
Directors
Cast
Jack Black, Eli Roth, Cate Blanchett, Colleen Camp, Kyle MacLachlan, Ricky Muse, Lorenza Izzo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Owen Vaccaro, Charles Green, Sunny Suljic, Braxton Bjerken, Vanessa Anne Williams, De'Jon Watts, Aaron Beelner, Joshua Phillips, Christian Calloway, Caleb Lawrence, Dylan Gage Moore, Jalyn Hall, Jackson T. Giles IV, Alli Beckman
Trailer
Reviews
79
The House With a Clock in Its Walls is easily Eli Roth’s best motion picture, and that’s not an attempt to damn the film with faint praise. It’s a spooky and amusing piece of family-friendly Halloween cinema, sharply produced and mostly effective, told with skill and panache.
70
As a family film in that vein it largely succeeds, buoyed by Black’s typical exuberance, Blanchett’s typical slyness and a richly evocative rendering of a Rockwellian suburb sprinkled with goofer dust. Less interesting, as is the way with many audience-avatar YA protagonists (sorry, Harry), is the main character, and Vaccaro’s rather hyper-articulated performance doesn’t help.
67
Black, no surprise, steals the show, manically hamming it up like Harry Houdini on laughing gas, while Roth tries to keep the breakneck pace of his phantasmagoria going. As someone who was growing bored with Roth’s gory shockfests, I say: “Welcome to the kiddie table, Eli.”
60
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.
60
An engaging new direction for Eli Roth, who offsets the odd tonal hiccup with plenty of ghoulish delights.
