THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS (2018) *** ½

Eli Roth is one of my favorite directors working today.  When it was announced he was making a kids’ movie with Jack Black, I immediately thought the worst.  I guess I imagined it was going to be like a Goosebumps redux or something.  As it turns out, I needn’t had worried.  The House with a Clock in its Walls is an Eli Roth picture through and through.  

Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) is a misfit kid who goes to live with his weird uncle Johnathan (Jack Black) after the death of his parents.  He eventually comes to realize that his uncle is a warlock and Lewis begs Johnathan to teach him the family trade.  Lewis meddles with a forbidden spell and accidentally awakens a dead warlock (Kyle MacLachlan) bent on destroying the world.  It’s then up to Lewis, Johnathan, and his witchy neighbor Florence (Cate Blanchett) to team up and stop him.

When Roth makes a kids’ movie, he doesn’t fuck around.  If you thought this was going to be watered down, you’d needn’t worry.  Even though people aren’t torn apart or gratuitously tortured, there are still tons of creepy moments here and plenty of Roth’s trademark black humor on display.  

The difference with this and Jack Black’s previous kids’ horror movie, Goosebumps is that Roth plays the horror with a straight face.  We get a creepy automaton attack, an atmospheric scene set in a graveyard, and the bit with the withered old demon in the forest is just as effective as anything in Roth’s R-rated arsenal.  Even the more outlandish moments have an icky vibe to them that most directors wouldn’t even think about applying to a “kids’ movie”.  (I’m thinking specifically about the Jack-Black-as-a-baby scene.)  His wicked sense of humor shines through too as there is a gym class scene that is flat-out hysterical.  

Is some of this a little too broad?  Yes, unfortunately.  I for one could’ve done without the shitting topiary griffin.  However, the film is so jam-packed with eye-popping visuals and effective moments that it’s easy to dismiss some of the clunkier passages.

The performances are uniformly excellent, which help further elevate the film from being your typical kids’ stuff.  Black is having a lot of fun in a tailor-made role that simultaneously allows him to run rampant while remaining an inspiring role model for a little kid.  Blanchett is her usual awesome self and gives her character a measured balance of cantankerous wit and tragic loss that few performers could’ve pulled off.  She’s just as good here as she was in any of her Oscar-nominated (and winning) roles.

The secret to Roth’s success is that he doesn’t pander to kids.  Sure, there is some silliness here, but his aim is to make you jump during the horrific moments.  My daughter, whose two favorite movies are Little Shop of Horrors and Beetlejuice ate it up.  The House with a Clock in its Walls is very much in the vein of those films.  They’re funny, fun, fast-moving, and contain just enough gruesome delights to please horror fans of every age.