The House With A Clock In Its Walls (Dir Eli Roth, 1h 45m)

 It now being just over two weeks to the start of October, and the Hallowe'en season, it's hardly surprising that a multitude of spooky, scary, and creepy movies are crawling, creeping and stalking their way into cinemas. With Eli Roth, a veteran of more adult fare in the form of slasher and horror movies, at the helm, The House With A Clock in Its Walls may be a throwback to the golden age of 80s tween cinema, but it's both an accomplished homage to these films, and a smart, if lightweight adaptation of a beloved childrens book.

By far and away the star of this film is Jack Black as Jonathan Barnavelt, a bumbling, cantankerous and self-confessed mediocre warlock whose house holds a terrible secret. Whilst it's yet another performance wherein Black essentually goes through the familiar Jack-Black-isms, he's nevertheless charming as ever, eventually opening up to his nephew, Lewis, and revealling that, under the boisterous and fast talking mage, there's a man less sure of his abilities, pining the loss of his sister, and trying hard to make a connection with his nephew. Having already proved his comedy-horror chops as RL Stein, there is also a deeper complexity to Black, knowing, with almost pinpoint accuracy, when to be funny and when to be serious, his natural expressivity as an actor lending well to this.

Acting both as a foil to Black, and as a welldeveloped character by herself is Cate Blanchett as Florence Zimmerman, a smart mouthed witch whose bickering relationship with Jonathan belies a strong platonic relationship, and her brokenheartedness. With both characters, there is a sense of melacholy loss, both of close family members, with Jonathan mourning his now deceased estranged sister. and of their former friend, Isaac Izard, whose shadow hangs over much of the film-set, as the film is in the 1950s, the shadow of the destruction, violence, and death of World War II hangs in the background of many of the adult characters, and lends even its villain a degree of pathos.

Lewis, for his part, is an extremely well written character, and the young actor who plays him, Owen Vaccaro, has enough talent to portray a precocious and extremely gifted young man thrown into a world that he does not fully understand, and quickly gets to grip, as a bookish and dedicated studier, with the world of magic that his uncle introduces to him, and, in the best tradition of these type of films, learns to grow and develop as a person, despite some of the mistakes he makes in wielding his power.

By far and away the standout star of this film is, however, the house and its contents-this is one of the great houses of horror cinema, from its veritable army of creepy dolls, marionettes and statues, who under the power of the villainous Izard, become a true, and surprisingly frightening threat, to the petlike chair that accompanies Jonathan around the house like a dog, and the massive griffin that lives in the garden to the memorable and surprisingly violent pumpkins that haunt the garden, to the very fabric of the house that acts as both friend and enemy to Jonathan and Lewis, locking people in and out of room, as well as omniously counting down towards an uncertain but threatening event connected to its malicious former owner-there is a great sense of detail and of character in the house, from its dilapidated gothic exterior to its veritable warren of rooms.






What this film does perfectly, however, is to recreate that tone of the great teen horror movies of the 80s, from its King-esque backwater town, complete with, lonely bookish hero, ancient, malovolent menace, two-faced bullies that eventually meet their commuppance, to the Spielbergian wonder when Jonathan finally does a piece of major magic, to its equally Spielbergian finale where everything is at stake, and an unlikely hero saves the day in an unlikely way.

Whilst it may not have the slick selfaware or self-referencial sense that a more modern take on the material may have, The House With A Clock In Its Walls is a warm-hearted, retro-ish homage to teen horror films, that's certainly worth a watch over the spooky season.

Rating: Recommended