The highlight of the movie is clearly and obviously Jack Black as Lewis' uncle. Am I being harsh? No I genuinely don't think so. Yep this movie offers nothing, quite literally nothing. So what does this movie offer that we haven't seen before? Rhetorical questions my dears. Of course this can't happen because Isaac has been long dead and buri.oh the young boy disobeys his uncle's orders and uses a magical book to cast a spell which raises Isaac from the dead. He has done this because he wants to turn back time to the point that mankind never existed and the hidden clock will somehow allow that to happen via some magical alignment or something, I dunno.

Unsurprisingly Lewis finds out that the old house was once owned by an evil warlock called Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan) who has hidden a clock within the walls of the house. Unsurprisingly the boy's uncle turns out to be a warlock, a good warlock, and his best friend Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) is a good witch.Įventually Lewis grows accustomed to his new supernatural surroundings and begins to learn the ways of witchcraft. From the outset it's pretty clear that all is not quite right within this house. So in this story (originally published in 1973 so it predates a lot of most children's book movie adaptations), a young boy named Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) goes to live with his uncle John (Jack Black) in his large creepy Addams Family style house after his parents are killed in a car accident. Īnother children's book series adapted into a potential movie franchise? Ugh!!! Directed by Eli Roth? Wha?!! A sequel wouldn't be a bad thing, but further depth is required and now that the ground work has been done, let's make some villain improvements. Black was fun and he is starting to branch away from his usual style of comedy and it's nice to see. It becomes this basic good vs evil in the final third after all the mystery conversations and exposition. I'm annoyed the filmmaker wasn't able to adapt this to its full potential, even just bringing the villain on earlier. The film being created by Amblin carries the studio emblem for family content, and this has to be one of the better options for new material. I feel that modern films are neglecting the villains, when they should be embracing them. The real issue is the lack of villain, and it tends to tread water with the core characters instead of providing us with something resembling a correctly plotted film. Black was an inspired choice and backed up by the very talented Cate Blanchett.

The original book is quite different, but the film version is fitting for the target audience.

The house with clock in its walls book