The House with a Clock in its Walls (2018)
Some wounds need time to heal. Others stay with
you awhile and ooze. The House with a Clock in its
Walls is the story about oozing wounds… the loss of
family, in all its incarnations. By the end, the damaged
trio of “oddballs” have found each other and created a
new family, of “black swans” (instead of sheep).
The goggle-wearing,
book-loving, dictionary-reading Lewis Barnavelt (Owen
Vaccaro) is still reeling from the loss of his parents
in a car accident. He misses them so much, he pretends
their last present to him (a magic eight ball) is a way
to communicate with them. But soon, he finds a great
deal more “magic” in the home of his eccentric uncle,
Jonathan (Jack Black). Next door neighbors with his best
friend, the “walking purple skeleton” Florence Zimmerman
(Cate Blanchett), Uncle Jonathan doesn’t care how late
Lewis stays up, what he eats for dinner (cookies are
fine, young man), or what he does in his spare time.
It’s a house with no rules, just a lot of clocks.
They crowd every surface and
tick through the night, but not loud enough to disguise
Jonathan prowling through the eerie place, knocking on
walls. And when Lewis finds out why, he wishes he
hadn’t. But maybe if his uncle had told him the entire
truth, and the story behind his one rule (don’t look in
that cabinet), Lewis might not have performed a bit of
dangerous magic with evil repercussions.
For about the first hour of
this story, I was utterly enchanted. It follows the
children’s novel by John Bellairs (first published in
1973) closely and includes a lot of what makes the book
so much fun to read—the witty insults that fly fast and
frequent between Jonathan and Florence, paired with the
atmospheric and frankly wonderful visuals of a magical
house in 1955. In some ways, it has expounded on and
improved the book, by giving Florence a sad back story,
giving her an out-of-control purple garden snake, and
avoiding a few of the more tedious sections (such as the
night of the endless drive). But then the book and the
movie takes a darker twist into necromancy and its
aftermath; it’s never portrayed as good (Lewis learns
the hard way why you should let sleeping skeletons lie)
but it comes with a lot of unsettling grotesque images
and scenes, including flashbacks of one character making
a pact with a demon.
Overall, I thought it was one
of the best adaptations from a book I’ve ever seen; the
director hit all the right cinematic notes by blending
charm, humor, and horror. The cast is fantastic. But
there were moments that did not sit right with me from a
spiritual perspective. Lewis learns he shouldn’t dabble
with dark forces… but seeing them so vividly on-screen
was enough to raise the hair on the back of my neck.
Even so, there’s a lot of good lessons here too, about
facing your fears, owning up to your mistakes, taking
responsibility for your actions, making sacrifices for
your friends, and moving on from traumatic experiences.
You just might want to leave the kids at home; this
could give them nightmares.
Sexual Content:
A woman says she and a man are not doing "kissy face
stuff" (not seeing each other). A naked baby (no
nudity).
Language:
A couple of uses of damn, hell, good lord, and oh my
geeod.
Violence:
A boy cuts his hand and bleeds on a spell book. A man
cuts his hand and lets a demon with a long tongue lap it
up. Lots of scary scenes inside and around a house,
where various things (evil pumpkins, dolls / toys,
books, shrubs, etc) attack people. A bully shoves kids
around at school and punches one boy in the stomach.
Other:
Heavy occult content. Lots of magic. Dark / sinister
scenes of raising a corpse from the dead; a reference to
demons and demonic possession; a plot revolves around
bringing about the "end of days."
