The House With A Clock In Its Walls wants to be the solution to that. Based on John Bellairs’ book series and brought to the screen by Supernatural’s Eric Kripke and Eli Roth, it’s a big, bold age-appropriate frightener that picks up where the early 00s left off and carves out something both decidedly throwback and thoroughly modern. Soon, after discovering that his uncle is actually a warlock (‘a boy witch,’ he says matter of factly), and the house is alive in a Beauty And The Beast (without the creepy curse) kind of way, Lewis insists on learning about magic himself and joining Jonathan and Florence in their search for the ominous clock left behind by bad warlock Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan) before it’s too late. Eli Roth is of course the surprise name here, departing from a decade and a half of R-rated gore fests to enter an entirely different space in which his usual tricks aren’t allowed under the PG-rating. It’s a shockingly good fit, however, with Roth’s experience with the tricks and tropes of the genre translating very well to this more tempered, but never toothless, subject matter. You can tell that he knows what he’s doing, and Kripke’s experience with delivering non-traumatising frights on television don’t hurt. Cate Blanchett is the cherry on top. If you’ve ever wanted to see an Oscar-winning actress headbutt an animated pumpkin before doing a backflip, then this film is for you. But it’s Florence’s story that also grounds the film in something a little less magical, and a lot darker. The atrocities of the war are never really mentioned explicitly except in providing a motive for its villain, but it’s aftermath hangs over the characters like a spectre of loss and trauma. It’s the perfect set-up for a film of this kind. As we know, all of the best young literary heroes have to have lost their parents before the action starts, but what’s most refreshing here is that the adults also get to deal with their own demons even when it doesn’t relate directly to Lewis. Still, House With A Clock In Its Walls is a wonderful surprise and one I hope doesn’t fly under the radar. Although the film is far from perfect, the cinematic landscape could certainly use a little more of this kind of thing and, with twelve novels to draw from, it wouldn’t be difficult to make it into a franchise. In a world where the Harry Potter franchise is more concerned with ethnic cleansing and Johnny Depp, kids need a new magical trio to root for. The House With A Clock In Its Walls is in UK cinemas from Friday.
