I’ll clean yer clock…
-
The House With A Clock In Its Walls (2018): 7.5/10
Engaging Horror Lite for kids is a knowing throwback to “80’s PG” Amblin productions from – of all people – director Eli Roth (the auteur behind the reprehensible
Hostel franchise and assorted other ugly, unappealing horror trash). Adapting a 1973 young adult novel by John Bellairs,
House follows your typical Spielbergian orphan, Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), who, when his parents die in a car crash circa 1955, is sent off to live with his eccentric Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) in his sprawling, medieval mansion crammed to rafters with old-timey junk. Oh, did I mention that Uncle Jonathan is a warlock (“…a boy witch!”), and along with his neighbor, Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) has to prevent a mysterious clock hidden somewhere in his home from winding down completely, or else a terrible plot set in motion by Uncle Jonathan’s deceased old magic partner, Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan), will come to pass?
House… is a film brimming with fun visual frippery, and Black (all roly-poly exuberance) and Blanchett (all swanlike, patrician elegance) make for a winningly platonic pair, sniping at each other with wittily loving venom. It’s also engagingly dark at times, not backing away from some eerie visual imagery likely to give the very youngest kids pleasurable shivers. And yet the final product, as enjoyable for younger viewers as it is, kind of plays like one of those early-to-mid 2000’s
Harry Potter knockoffs about a Chosen One learning bout love and loss and his totally awesome powers and stuff. It doesn’t help that Vaccaro is – to put as kindly as possible – not a very good young actor. Every time he’s tasked with depicting Lewis’ inner torment or sadness, he drops into the same wide-mouthed Ugly Cry face that’s more unintentionally comic that authentically moving. I always feel a little guilty picking on a child actor, and I’m sure the kid could have improved over time had this film spawned a franchise, and yet he’s not really up to the task of being a compelling lead character. Still, it’s a bright, fun, moderately spooky seasonal adventure for kids, and I’m sure they and their charmed parents should be able to overlook its flaws and enjoy it once the trick-or-treating has wound down.
Annabelle Comes Home (2019): 7/10
Third in the
Annabelle franchise (spun off from the spooky doll featured in the original
Conjuring) is somewhere in the middle, quality-wise, leagues better than the wan first film but not quite as eerie or atmospheric as that film’s pre-prequel,
Annabelle: Creation. When Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as always) are away investigating their latest paranormal case, they leave young daughter Judy (McKenna Grace, replacing the now too-old Sterling Jerins in the role) in the care of babysitter Judy (Madison Iseman) and her friend Daniella (Katie Sarife). But when Daniella starts poking around the “artifact room” that contains all of the cursed and highly-dangerous items the Warrens have accrued over the years, the evil influence of Annabelle starts to bleed out, and allow the other objects in the room to spread and infect the three girls with horrible visions of murderous, blood-splattered brides, dead ferrymen with creepy,
Coraline silver-dollar eyes and slavering werewolves prowling in the fog outside.
Annabelle Comes Home (the directing debut of series writer Gary Dauberman) offers a myriad of pleasurable shivers, with a surprisingly lack of gore considering the movie’s inexplicable R-rating (seriously, you could show this on network TV and not cut a frame from it) and fine performances from the trio of leading ladies. That said, there’s a modicum of wear & tear at this point in the “Conjuringverse”, a few too many spins through the same funhouse of hushed paused and subwoofer-rattling shocks, and one hopes that the upcoming third solo
Conjuring movie would be a wise point to wrap it all up. This one is certainly fun and effective, but a little too-much, too-much.
Fun-sized All Hallows horror…
-
Tales Of Halloween (2015): 3/10
-
Trick ‘r Treat (2009): 8.5/10
Dug into the candy dish for a pair of bite-sized holiday anthologies. 2015’s
Tales Of Halloween, sadly, is that pack of chalky Necco wafers that any self-respecting kid will try to trade away, only to find out no one else wants it, either. Offering a whopping ten stories spread across it’s 97-minute running time, it’s a thoroughly disappointing collection of routine ghoulish fare, with sub-Sam Raimi gore, a dearth of laughs or scares and “ironic” punchlines you can see coming a mile away. It’s nice to hear the sultry tones of Adrienne Barbeau as the narrator, and there are a couple of fun cameos for genre fans, but not one story stands out, and most are too short to make any sort of meaningful impact. It’s not quite the
Movie 43 of horror anthologies (few skit movies can claim to be as wretched as
Movie 43), but it's still awfully lame.
What’s the best way to rinse out the taste of a bad horror movie? Chase it with a similarly-themed one that does it far better, of course. Michael Dougherty’s
Trick ‘r Treat (shot in 2007 and sadly kept on a shelf before being unceremoniously dumped direct-to-DVD in the fall of ’09) is pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to Halloween-themed anthologies, and horror anthologies in general, with all four tales contained within (sporting re-animated corpses, nasty l’ll bag-headed imps, a twisted take on
Little Red Riding Hood and a particularly strict high school principal) overlapping each other in a cleverly-constructed manner that makes this the
Pulp Fiction of horror anthologies. The mixture of scares and laughs is perfectly-pitched, the chronology of events helps each story to build upon the last one in a satisfying manner, and Douglas Pipes’ lush score (utilizing a fiendishly clever interpretation on that sing-songy childhood chant that ends, “…give me something good to eat…”) keeps the tone light and breezy. A new seasonal classic, and one that gets things done in under eighty fat-free minutes.