Monster House

Looking out his window, DJ (Mitchel Musso) sees a creepy-looking house (Kathleen Turner). It's owned by Mr Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi), who really doesn't want people on his lawn. Toys that end up there disappear, taken by Nebbercracker to discourage trespassing. DJ catalogs the lost items, but his parents (Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard) aren't interested in his observations of the house. Just before Halloween, his parents leave him home, in the care of babysitter Elizabeth (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who prefers the nickname "Z". His friend "Chowder" (Sam Lerner) visits, and joins his observation of the house. They spot Jenny (Spencer Locke, who is a girl whose parents stuck her with a boy's name) about to try to sell Halloween candy to Nebbercracker, and hurry to talk her out of approaching the house. Before long, they discover that Nebbercracker isn't the only thing that's creepy about the house. The house, it seems, has a life of its own.

This movie started as a script that sat unproduced for years, for want of technology and the right people to make it. The technology that went into it turned out to be the same sort of animation as _The Polar Express_, digital animation based on motion capture. Like _Polar_, it has a stylized look rather than attempting photorealism, but instead of taking the look of paintings in a book, it took the look of extremely detailed dolls and doll accessories. But with motion capture driving the movements of the characters, they end up with a lot of personality, which overrides their stylized look. The animation is least effective in the climax scene at the end, where it exaggerates the action just a bit too far for my tastes, but even there it's pretty good. Most of the time the animation is excellent, with just the right degree of exaggeration to fit the stylized look. The sets are very good, particularly a construction site near the house. I'd rate the animation very good.

More important than the technology is the story. What really makes the images on the screen interesting is the way they serve the story. Comparing with _The Polar Express_ again highlights the point -- this movie had a solid story, compared with _Polar_, which expanded a very thin children's book into a feature-length story. This movie's story isn't in a class with the best of Pixar, but the film-makers are clearly aware of the fact that the strength of the story is very important. I'd rate the story very good.

The voice and motion capture performances, shot in only 34 days, are almost all excellent. My favorite was Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was wonderful in her supporting part as babysitter "Z". The least satisfying, I thought, was Jon Heder (as video-game master "Skull"), and he was good, just not great. Even Kathleen Turner, as the house, performed in the motion capture space, moving around in a neighborhood constructed of foam. I really hope that the director wasn't joking when he said he might include her motion capture video as a DVD extra. Nick Cannon, as a rookie police officer, was probably the funniest character, relative to his screen time.

Kathleen Turner's presence in the cast is a bit of a nod to executive producer Robert Zemeckis, who cast her as Jessica Rabbit in _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_. She was thrilled by the part, which gave her a grotesque role to mirror her glamorous role as Jessica Rabbit. Other Zemeckis references are more obvious. Most obvious one is in the opening, featuring a leaf. Another deals with a basketball -- originally an accident during production. Others may exist, but it's not packed with pop culture references like the _Shrek_ movies.

Directing an animated film is different in a lot of ways from directing live action, which makes it more complicated to rate. Directing this movie involved directing both the motion capture performances and the camera positioning. The director took the script, and made complete storyboards from it. From those, he made an animatic, which guided the way he directed the motion capture shoot. Because of the way character interactions affected the results, he said that he ended up throwing out all the storyboarding, but I'd guess he meant that figuratively. The character interaction looked really good, better than almost any animated movie I've seen. I'd rate the directing excellent, in a class with Pixar.

Overall, I'd rate the movie very good, mostly on the strength of the story. Kids are usually easy to please, and they'll probably find the movie excellent. Adults are harder to please. Where _Shrek_ emphasizes pop culture references for adult appeal, this movie targets adults' memories of childhood, effectively drawing adults into enjoying it like the kids in the audience.

Credits: There are a few additional scenes after the credits begin. Don't run out right away. Stick around at least until the fine-print credits roll.

Personal appearances: The director, Gil Kenan, and a couple of the producers (I don't know which ones, but not Spielberg or Zemeckis) were there. The director took questions from the audience, and answered very enthusiastically -- he seemed like he was thrilled to see his film in front of a real audience, and not burned out from hearing the same questions over and over. He was really nice to the kids in the audience, and behaved like he was new to the experience of being the center of attention. He signed lots of autographs (including one for me), and seemed genuinely pleased that people cared enough to ask. That's a reaction that one might expect for the director of something obscure, but uncommonly nice for the director of a big-budget summer movie.

The US rating is "PG", for some scary scenes and (supposedly) "crude humor and brief language". The crude humor is minimal, compared to typical movies aimed at kids. I can't think of any inappropriate language.

Well, I think if I saw this movie when I was ten years old, I would have been totally scared and could not sleep for weeks. Now it seems time has changed: ten-year-old children are playing horror-video games so probably what was too scary for them in the eighties is just right and fun now. Actually this is just what you could expect from a movie about a monster house: funny, spectacular, sometimes frightening. Quite a well-developed story - even if it is full of clichés, or should I say homage? - with the usual "two boys, one girl" trio as seen in Star Wars or Harry Potter. The animation is strange at first: they seem like rubber dummies, but thanks to the motion capture, their movement and expressions are first rate. While they look like having plastic hair, there is a great development since Polar Express in one field: their eyes are constantly moving - full of life. And the whole movie is just a typical and fun Spielberg-Zemeckis production with elements of Hitchcock. Besides the extraordinarily dark scenes it just feels like those very entertaining Spielberg productions of the eighties.

The teenage DJ is observing his neighbor Nebbercracker on the other side of their street in the suburb that destroys tricycles of children that trespass his lawn. When DJ's parents travel on the eve of Halloween and the abusive nanny Zee stays with him, he calls his clumsy best friend Chowder to play basketball. But when the ball falls in Nebbercracker's lawn, the old man has a siege, and sooner they find that the house is a monster. Later the boys rescue the smart Jenny from the house and the trio unsuccessfully tries to convince the babysitter, her boyfriend Bones and two police officers that the haunted house is a monster, but nobody believes on them. The teenagers ask their video-game addicted acquaintance Skull how to destroy the house, and they disclose its secret on the Halloween night.

"House Monster" begins like "Fright Night", i.e., a teenager sees a weird situation with his neighbor and nobody gives credit to his words. The story is flawed, since nobody sees the attacks and movements of the house in the whole neighborhood, only the three teens. But the movie is very funny, with great animation and hilarious voices, and an excellent and worthwhile family entertainment. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Casa Monstro" ("The Monster House")

I guess you could label this an "edgy animated film." It's certainly wasn't made with little kids in mind. If it was, that was a mistake because this a pretty scary film in parts - much to much for the little ones.

The "edginess" isn't just the violence (a Halloween-type scary house and the comes alive and attacks people), it's most of the characters. They are typical Hollywood-young people meaning they have "attitudes." They aren't exactly sweet, lovable people, except for the one young boy "D.J." (voiced by Mitchel Musso). The dialog on the kids - two boys, the babysitter and her boyfriend - make this more of a film for teens and younger adults. The "attitude" means wise-remarks and general obnoxiousness and rebellious attitudes. The worst in that attitude category is D.J.'s friend "Chowder," the kind of guy who talks you into doing things that wind up getting YOU in trouble.

The best part of the film, besides the animation, is the unpredictability of the story. You kept wondering what was going to happen next. That made the 91 minutes go by pretty fast. It's a simple story but very entertaining despite the not-so-great-role models and, as most pictures do, has a good message and a few heartwarming scenes at the end.

The animation is a bit clunky and grainy, but this somehow adds to the dark atmosphere, which is fairly unique for mainstream American animation. Although it is not explicitly stated, the main protagonist seems to be suffering from depression. The story itself is different from a typical haunted house story, in that the house itself is anthropomorphized, and at its heart lies the cemented-over body of Nevercracker's dead wife, her soul now possessing it. As the movie itself notes, this is the literal (monstrous) definition of "house wife."

Watched in Princeton and in Iowa City 2020, on Halloween night!