Review of The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018) by Stuart M — 21 Sep 2018

The House With A Clock In Its Walls is based upon the first (bar one) book by my favorite childhood author. Just the covers of these books (with the morbid paintings by the Burtonesque Edward Gorey) were enough to give me nightmares. In retrospect the books weren't that scary (I got far worse scares from Fear Street or even the occasional Goosebumps since not all of those stories had happy endings) but at the time they scared the hell out of me.

I loved it.

But the books were never hugely famous (or at least I've never known anyone else who read them) and rather niche so I never expected to see them adapted to film. Certainly not a Hollywood film starring Jack Black and Cate Blanchett. To say I was excited to hear this would be an understatement.

On the whole I think the film does justice to the book. The characters are all recognizable and enjoyable versions of the book characters. Cate Blanchett is perfect of course, although her American accent sounds surprisingly coarse, but it's Jack Black who's the real treat. I had worried that he'd ham it up like he tends to do. I mean, obviously hamming it up is part of playing a warlock but his particular brand of balls-to-the-wall madness would prove a poor fit for the largely staid Jonathan. But Black keeps his crazy eyes to a minimum and while he plays up the weird immensely he doesn't go in for his normal wildness. Later career Jack Black is proving a remarkably reliable performer. I am pleasantly surprised to see that.

The only exception to this is the boy playing Lewis himself. While he does grow into the role somewhat the kid cannot cry to save his life and lacks the confidence to properly space his line readings. He always sounds so rushed and eager to have them done with. I don't like criticizing child actors since they lack the experience of their co-stars and are trying their best, but this is not an impressive film debut. If we're talking casting, Lewis also isn't as chubby as he's supposed to be, which is a big deal for a series that focuses on awkward-looking outsider kids building few but powerful friendships. Every lead in a Bellairs book fit some type of outsider body type, be it overweight, small and bespectacled, or tall and gangly. Giving a normal-looking kid goggles just doesn't quite cut it. More impressive is Lewis' sorta-friend Tarby, played it turns out by the boy who voiced Atreus in God of War. Cool.

The plot is actually pretty faithful to the book, even the dumb stuff that seemed silly at the time, like performing necromancy in a graveyard at night to impress a friend. Even as a kid... yikes! What's been added is a bit of expansion to the bare-bones backstory for Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmerman. And Izard too surprisingly. A lot of this is tied to the war, and this is one of the few aspects of the film that made use of the '50s setting. I really do wish they'd let us see more of '50s life. Seeing how kids lived in a different era was a big part of the draw for ten-year-old me. Things like inkwells in desks and bodybuilder magazines shipped to houses (the old form of spam mail) really caught my interest. And while '50s Michigan doesn't have the same sort of iconic status as the darkly-lit streets of 1880s London it still provides the opportunity for a plenty isolated and somewhat distant setting suitable to horror.

The tone is a little inconsistent. Mostly it manages to be very spoopy, ie. creepy but not really in a threatening or scary way. The book was scarier and a bit less afraid to be truly frightening but this mostly works. It even matches the tone of the school sections, which are almost exactly as they appear in the book.

Where the altered tone actually damages the film is the ending. The ending of the book is a bit . . . not abrupt exactly but sudden and decisive. Magic in Bellairs' books is always the sort of thing that either works or backfires immediately, which leaves little room for drawn out sequences. The horror comes from the fear of not knowing where evil lurks or what it wants, not from confronting it face to face. Well the film feels it can't be content without a grand action finale so that's what we get. Combined with the reappearance of a villain who was very scary right until the point he started to speak and explain everything (calling it an evil monologue doesn't quite cut it since those are usually much more sinister) you basically have no reason to feel afraid. They're never going to kill the kid in these sorts of films (except for It, thank you, Stephen King!) But they usually retain at least the pretense that the boy could die. Even the villain doesn't seem to really want that. In fact, he actually seems fond of him. Err... okay.

On the whole I really liked the film. I wish I could have seen it with someone who'd never read the book since much of my enjoyment came from seeing places from my imagination on screen. I've genuinely no idea how this would look to a child coming upon it for the first time. I do wish they'd toned down the ending (for all the fun it was watching Blanchett shoot living jack-o-lanterns with her magic umbrella) and kept the villains less camp. Kids horror is different from adult horror and you can't be as ruthless as say It is, but it still includes a real sense of danger and unpleasantness. And I feel that both of those are missing to one degree or another. It's delightful to see Eli Roth leaving his comfort zone but perhaps bringing a bit more of that terror with him would have made this a better film. As it is it stands somewhere between good and very good. Better than the Goosebumps movie, but not as good as the TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark? From back in the day when we were less worried about coddling kids.