Psycho's Movie Reviews #238: Monster House (2006)

Monster House is a 2006 American computer-animated supernatural comedy horror film directed by Gil Kenan in his directorial debut from a screenplay by Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab and Pamela Pettler, about a neighborhood being terrorized by a sentient haunted house during Halloween. The film features the voices of Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Nick Cannon, Jason Lee, Fred Willard, Jon Heder, Catherine O'Hara, and Kathleen Turner, as well as human characters being animated using live action motion capture animation, which was previously used in The Polar Express (2004). It was Sony's first computer animated film produced by Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Produced by Robert Zemeckis' ImageMovers, Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment (marking their first theatrically-released fully animated film since Balto (1995)) and Relativity Media (their first animated film), the film was released theatrically by Columbia Pictures on July 21, 2006. It was a critical and commercial success, receiving generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $142 million worldwide against a $75 million budget and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature alongside Cars, but lost to Happy Feet.

Plot

The parents of 12-year-old D.J. Walters go to a dentist convention for the weekend, leaving him in the care of his babysitter Zee. D.J. has been spying on his elderly neighbour, Horace Nebbercracker, who scares away children from his front yard and confiscates their belongings. After D.J.'s best friend, Chowder, misplaces his basketball on Nebbercracker's lawn, D.J. is caught attempting to retrieve it and the enraged Nebbercracker appears to suffer a heart attack from overexerting himself and is taken away by an ambulance. He is presumed dead by D.J. who holds himself responsible. That night, D.J. gets phone calls from the house with no one on the other end.

Zee's boyfriend, Bones, comes over for the night and reveals that as a child, Nebbercracker stole his kite and was allegedly rumoured to have eaten his wife. After Zee throws him out, he sees his lost kite in the house's front door, but is abducted by the house while attempting to retrieve it. D.J. and Chowder investigate but retreat when the house comes alive and attacks them. The next morning, schoolgirl Jenny Bennett sells Halloween candy and goes to the house; D.J. and Chowder save her before she gets eaten. Jenny calls police officers Landers and Lister, who do not believe the children because the house is inactive when adults are present.

The trio consults supernatural expert Reginald "Skull" Skulinski, learning that the house is a rare monster created when a human soul merges with a man-made structure, and can only be killed by destroying its heart. Concluding that Nebbercracker's spirit was responsible and the heart must be its furnace, they create and bring a dummy containing cold medicine from a pharmacy owned by Chowder's father. Before the dummy reaches the house however, Landers and Lister thwart their plan and arrest them after Landers discovers the stolen medicine. Before they can leave, the house devours everyone and the police vehicle.

After the house falls asleep, the three begin exploring it. In the basement, they find a shrine containing the cement-encased skeleton of Nebbercracker's late wife, Constance the Giantess. The house attacks them, though they force it to vomit them outside by grabbing its uvula. Nebbercracker returns alive and well, revealing that the house is actually possessed by Constance's spirit. As a young man, he met Constance, then an unwilling member of a circus freak show, and fell in love with her. After helping her to escape, they were married and he bought a piece of land to construct a house. One Halloween, two children tormented Constance for her size. Constance became enraged and attempted to chase off the children with an axe; when Nebbercracker attempted to stop her, she accidentally tripped and fell to her death in the unfinished basement of the house, in the process inadvertently activating a cement mixer that buried her body. Nebbercracker finished the house like she would've wanted, and when it became obvious that Constance's vengeful spirit had possessed the house, he began driving away visitors to protect them.

D.J. convinces Nebbercracker to let Constance go, enraging the house. It breaks free from its foundation and chases after the group. Nebbercracker realizes the trouble Constance has caused and attempts to destroy the house with some dynamite, and it attempts to kill him. Chowder intervenes using an excavator from the adjacent construction site and Nebbercracker gives D.J. the dynamite. After luring the house into the site, D.J. ascends the nearby crane and, with Jenny's help, manages to throw the dynamite into the house's chimney, destroying it and releasing Constance's spirit, who shares a final moment with Nebbercracker before finally ascending to the afterlife as Nebbercracker thanks the kids for freeing him from being trapped without Constance for 45 years. That night, the children Nebbercracker drove away line up at the former site of the house, where the group returns everything confiscated by Nebbercracker. D.J. and Chowder go trick-or-treating, which they initially felt they were too old for.

During the credits, those who were eaten by the house emerge from the basement. Bones finds that Zee is now dating Skull, Officer Landers and Officer Lister leave to "investigate" some of the trick-or-treating candy, and a dog urinates on a nearby jack-o'-lantern enough to extinguish its flame.

Production

The film was initially set up at DreamWorks Animation, based on a pitch by newcomer Gil Kenan. Having just finished film school recently, Kenan had been having several meetings with film producers for a while, but he hadn't found any success, with a screenplay based on the Pac-Man video game series going unproduced. After Kenan received Dan Harmon's and Rob Schrab's Monster House screenplay for ImageMovers, Kenan had a meeting with the head of story Bennett Schneir, where he was able to pitch his vision for the film. Schneir worked for Robert Zemeckis as the head of development at ImageMovers, and Kenan had a meeting with Zemeckis quickly thereafter, apparently due to the filmmakers wanting to get a director for the project as fast as they could. Upon impressing Zemeckis with his pitch, Kenan then had a meeting with Steven Spielberg, meeting during which he pitched the film to Spielberg in a presentation with some sketches and drawings he had drawn before meeting Zemeckis. By 2004, the studio put the film in turnaround, to which Sony Pictures picked up the project and began production on August 23 of that year.

The original screenplay of Monster House was, in Kenan's words, "absolutely brilliant and laugh-out-loud funny". Due to his experience as a storyteller, Kenan decided to preserve all the characters and the tone from Harmon's and Schrab's story, but added the idea that the titular house was possessed by a soul, leading to the creation of Constance Nebbercracker and the house's backstory. To help him revise the script and introduce Constance and Horace Nebbercracker into the plot, Kenan brought Pamela Pettler after reading her script for Corpse Bride (2005). They worked on the script at her house, and to meet the established deadline, they finished a draft quickly and sent it to Amy Pascal at Columbia Pictures. As work in the screenplay was underway, in a few months of preparation, Kenan had assembled a team of storyboard artists led by Simeon Wilkins in Studio City, Los Angeles to put up rudimentary boards with scratch dialogue and temporal score, with Khang Lee and Chris Appelhans collaborating on paintings for the film.

The film was shot using performance capture, in which the actors performed the characters' movement and lines while linked to sensors, a process pioneered by Zemeckis for his film The Polar Express (2004). Zemeckis was in the process of starting filming The Polar Express when he met Kenan, who visited the set to see how that film was filmed and discussed with Kenan how they would exactly shoot Monster House, deciding that they prioritize the story before the filming technology, though Kenan always felt that the story should use animation to create a world with a living house, as he opined that making the house a viable threat and character would better work in an animated setting. A stereoscopic 3D version of the film was created and had a limited release in digital 3D stereo alongside the 2D version. It was also released in approximately 200 theatres equipped with the new RealD Cinema digital 3D stereoscopic projection. The process was not based on film, but was purely digital. Since the original source material was "built" in virtual 3D, it created a very rich stereoscopic environment. For the film's release, the studio nicknamed it Imageworks 3D.

The casting for Monster House was a laborious process, especially for the lead trio, who were portrayed by Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner and Spencer Locke. Kenan agreed with head of animation Troy Saliba that actors should be needed to portray the roles in a believable way. Many of the film's artists interpreted the roles on set and enhanced the lead actors through good old-fashioned posed animation that drove the exaggerations of their performances to make them feel subtle and real.

Ed Verreaux served as the production designer of Monster House. To design the neighbourhood where the story takes place, Verreaux realized that the film's setting needed to resemble that of 1980s films, like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). During his discussions with Harmon and Schrab, Kenan was told that the film's setting was inspired by that of Wisconsin, Minneapolis. Verreaux and Kenan went together in a scouting to design the film's locations, which involved a visit to Universal Studios' backlot, during which they were granted access to the suburban street of The 'Burbs (1989), the neighbourhood of the show Desperate Housewives and the house of Psycho (1960).

Monster House was the first animated feature film using the Arnold rendering software (co-developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks), and the first feature film entirely rendered with unbiased, brute-force path tracing.

Years after the movie came out, Harmon received a letter from an upset 7-year-old who was displeased with the film. Harmon wrote back that he did not finish the script when the studio took it and hired other writers to change it. He further denounced it by stating that Kenan was a hack and called Spielberg a moron.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 75% approval rating, based on 162 reviews with an average rating of 6.83/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Monster House e sic kids and adults alike into a household full of smart, monstrous fun." On Metacritic the film has a score of 68 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert gave the film his highest ranking of four stars calling it "one of the most original and exciting animated movies I've seen in a long time" and compared it to the work of Tim Burton. Ian Freer of Empire gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, stating "A kind of Goonies for the Noughties, Monster House is a visually dazzling thrill ride that scales greater heights through its winning characters and poignantly etched emotions. A scary, sharp, funny movie, this is the best kids’ flick of the year so far." Jane Boursaw of Common Sense Media also gave it 4 stars out of 5, saying "This is one of those movies where all the planets align: a top-notch crew (director Gil Kenan; executive producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis), memorable voices that fit the characters perfectly; and a great story, ingenious backstory, and twisty-turny ending." Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel also gave the film four stars out of five, saying "This Monster House is a real fun house. It's a 3-D animated kids' film built on classic gothic horror lines, a jokey, spooky Goonies for the new millennium." Scott Bowles of USA Today gave the film a positive review, saying that "The movie treats children with respect. Monster's pre-teens are sarcastic, think they're smarter than their parents and are going crazy over the opposite sex". Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle wrote, "It's engineered to scare your pants off, split your sides and squeeze your tear ducts into submission." Michael Medved called it "ingenious" and "slick, clever [and] funny" while also cautioning parents about letting small children see it due to its scary and intense nature, adding that a "PG-13 rating would have been more appropriate than its PG rating." A. O. Scott of The New York Times commented, "One of the spooky archetypes of childhood imagination—the dark, mysterious house across the street—is literally brought to life in "Monster House," a marvellously creepy animated feature directed by Gil Kenan."

However, the film was not without its detractors. Frank Lovece of Film Journal International praised director Gil Kenan as "a talent to watch" but berated the "internal logic that keeps changing.... D.J.'s parents are away, and the house doesn't turn monstrous in front of his teenage babysitter, Zee. But it does turn monstrous in front of her boyfriend, Bones. It doesn't turn monstrous in front of the town's two cops until, in another scene, it does." In a dismissive review, Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote: "Alert 'Harry Potter' fans will notice the script shamelessly lifts the prime personality traits of J. K. Rowling's three most important young characters for its lead trio: Tall, dark-haired, serious-minded DJ is Harry, semi-dufus Chowder is Ron and their new cohort, smarty-pants prep school redhead Jenny (Spencer Locke), is Hermione.... it is a theme-park ride, with shocks and jolts provided with reliable regularity. Across 90 minutes, however, the experience is desensitizing and dispiriting and far too insistent."

Monster House opened theatrically on July 21, 2006, alongside Clerks II, Lady in the Water and My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and grossed $22.2 million in its opening weekend, ranking number two at the North American box office behind Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The film ended its theatrical run on October 22, 2006, having grossed $73.7 million in North America and $68.2 million overseas for a worldwide total of $141.9 million against a production budget of $75 million.

Budget $75 million

Box office $141.9 million

My Review

Goosebumps, if not familiar, was a series of novels from the 90s which dealt with various spooky, unexplained, supernatural, and just plain weird stories meant for kids to take in in all its simplicity and imagination (or re-imagination to put it another way). Monster House is kind of like one of the books never written put up on the screen with an extra dosage of some funny moments and lots of visual tricks up the animator's sleeves. It's directed by first-timer Gil Keenan and written by a group that seems like they're more into older-animation (or at least not usually for the kiddies) and other comedy by their career rosters. But probably the biggest reason I decided first to see the film was because of the exec producer credits belonging to Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. I'm not sure what their input was on the film, but it feels like one of those 80s era horror film or adventure type works that they were attached to (Poltergeist, the Goonies, and a few of Zemeckis's recent horror movie productions come to mind). It's a family horror comedy that actually has some characters for kids to connect and root for, with a little more development past the conventions, and a host of supporting characters that are actually as funny for adults and older teens as they might be for kids.

And the creativity in the animation department is some of the best I've seen in non-Pixar computer animated films so far. The house itself, possessed by a dead fat woman named Constance (Kathleen Turner surprisingly enough), is quite the marvel that really does make a good chunk of the enjoyment in the picture. The little twists and dark turns inside the house are like the best possible clichés of a haunted house turned inside out with added human-features (including a good joke about a part of the anatomy at one point). When the film goes into its final act and the house then literally lifts off of its foundation after the kids, it really becomes an entertaining spectacle where cliffhanging moments are abound and there's always time for a grin. In fact, it's really something to see how the humour in the film is not overly juvenile or predicated on excrement jokes, but more on behaviour and stuff kids relate to- being talked down to, boys clumsiness around girls, and fears of what may possibly be where they'd rather not look.

And making up the characters is a very good voice roster including Steve Buscemi as the old man Nebbercracker, Fred Willard & Catherine O'Hara as the parents, a nice crop of talented kid actors (Mitchell Musso, Sam Lerner and Spencer Locke), and others like Jason Lee, John Heder and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Like a good kid's horror book it delivers on some interesting bits involved in the mystery of the crux of the story, while as an animated feature it delivers on being engrossing (and fun) entertainment in its execution. It's also a blast, if you happen to get the chance, to see it in its limited run in 3-D. In short, I'm sure if I was younger I would've liked it even more, but as it is it's one of the more successful diversions in animated film this summer.

I firmly believe Monster House is the best animated film of 2006. I did like Happy Feet and Cars, but Monster House beats them both in my opinion. It is superbly animated, with the colours really bold and the character designs and backgrounds really interesting. I also liked the music, which further added to the atmosphere, while the story is briskly paced and smartly written. My favourite assets though are the script and characters. The characters are brilliantly written and wonderfully voiced, while the script is witty and inquisitive. Overall, I love Monster House and strongly recommend it for pretty much anybody really. 8.1/10