Monster House (film)

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Monster House
Promotional Poster For Monster House
Directed by	Gil Kenan
Produced by	Robert Zemeckis Steven Spielberg Jack Rapke Steve Starkey
Written by	Dan Harmon Rob Schrab Pamela Pettler
Starring	Mitchel Musso Sam Lerner Spencer Locke Steve Buscemi Maggie Gyllenhaal Kathleen Turner
Music by	Douglas Pipes
Cinematography	Paul C. Babin
Editing by	Adam P. Scott
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	July 21, 2006
Running time	91 minutes
Language	English
IMDb profile

Monster House is a 2006 computer animated suspense film released on July 21, 2006. The film's characters are animated primarily utilizing performance capture, making it the second film to use the technology so extensively, following producer Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express.

Contents 1 Release 1.1 Digital 3-D version 1.2 Premiere 2 Plot 3 Production 3.1 Cast 3.2 Performance capture 3.3 Music 4 Reception 4.1 Worldwide Ratings 4.2 Box office 5 DVD Release 6 Trivia 7 References 8 See also 9 External links

[edit] Release

In a Columbia press release distributed the company's New York City headquarters, at an early-May 2006 screening of the film's first half, the voice cast was listed as including Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Jason Lee, Catherine O'Hara, Kathleen Turner, and Fred Willard.

Director Kenan won the UCLA Spotlight Award for his live-action/animated horror-fantasy short The Lark. On the basis of that film, he was signed by the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) upon graduation. Kenan also garnered a 2001/02 British Academy Fellowship and the 2001/02 Lew Wasserman Fellowship in Film Production. Following Monster House, Kenan began developing The City of Ember, adapted by screenwriter Caroline Thompson from the Jeanne DuPrau book, for Walden Media and Playtone.

The movie has no relation to the Discovery Channel series also called Monster House.

This film was rated PG ("Parental Guidance Suggested") by the MPAA for scary images and sequences, thematic elements, some brief crude humor and language.

Taglines:

• There Goes The Neighborhood.
• Get ready to cross over to the other side... of the street.
• Welcome to the Fun House!

[edit] Digital 3-D version

As with The Polar Express, a stereoscopic 3-D version of the film has been created and is expected to have a limited special release in digital 3-D stereo along with the "flat" version. While The Polar Express was produced for the 3-D IMAX 70mm giant film format, Monster House will be released in approximately 200 theaters equipped for new REAL D Cinema digital 3-D stereoscopic projection. The process is not based on film, but is purely digital. Since the original source material was "built" in virtual 3-D, it creates a very rich stereoscopic environment, and with many months of lead time, it might surpass the 3-D effect of even The Polar Express. For the film's release, the studio nicknamed it Imageworks 3D.

[edit] Premiere

Monster House premiered in North America at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 15th, 2006. Before the theatrical release, it could also be watched on Blu-Ray Disc on a running PlayStation 3 prototype at the E3 2006.

[edit] Plot

The story of Monster House revolves around a preteen boy, DJ (Musso), who is sure that there is something strange going on in the house across the street. This house in question is well known by the children throughout the neighborhood as a house to avoid at all costs. It is owned by a crotchety old man named Mr. Nebbercracker (Buscemi), who is infamous for seizing anything that lands on his property.

The film starts with a young girl riding her tricycle through the leaves, singing to herself. She accidentally rides onto Mr. Nebbercracker's lawn, and her tricycle gets stuck. Mr. Nebbercracker comes out, and the girl pedals harder, but her tricycle won't move. She gets scared and jumps off, but wants to go back for her tricycle. Mr. Nebbercracker picks up her bike and rips the front wheel cleanly off. She starts crying and runs away. DJ has watched the whole thing through his telescope and runs outside to tell his parents (O'Hara and Willard), but they're leaving town for the weekend to attend a dental convention. Chowder (Lerner), a chubby teenage boy who is DJ's best friend, has been saving up all his money to buy a basketball, and he decides to break in his new basketball with DJ. Chowder is obsessed with Halloween. While playing with the ball it lands in Mr. Nebbercracker’s lawn. When DJ tries to recover the ball for Chowder, thinking that Mr. Nebbercracker might be asleep, Mr. Nebbercracker suddenly appears and grabs DJ, lifting him off the ground, screaming. Soon, though, Mr. Nebbercracker goes pale and collapses on DJ. Mr. Nebbercracker seems to die on the spot, causing DJ to feel responsible for his apparent death. While Nebbercracker is being carried away by the paramedics, he drops a gold key on his lawn, which DJ scoops up.

Right afterwards, DJ's apathetic Goth babysitter Elizabeth (Gyllenhaal), who refuses to be referred to as anything but "Zee", arrives. Despite DJ's insistence that he can take care of himself, DJ is sent to his room after Zee demonstrates her power over him. Later, in the middle of the night, DJ's phone rings, and he answers, getting nothing in reply but deep, throaty breathing. He hangs up, and the phone rings again inhumanly quickly. Getting only creaking on the other end, DJ dials *69 to return the call. He can hear the phone ringing in Nebbercracker's house. Immediately afterwards, Zee's boyfriend, Bones (Lee), comes over to the house, freaks DJ out by scaring him, and rips apart one of his toys. He and Zee laugh at DJ. DJ contacts Chowder, and they agree to meet at a construction lot. He overhears Zee and Bones talking about Nebbercracker. Bones mentions a kite that Nebbercracker took from him when he was ten years old, that he once saw Nebbercracker speaking to his house and kissing it, and of a legend around town that Nebbercracker fattened up his wife and ate her. Zee then shoves Bones out, pretending to be angry and saying that he has no respect for women. When he leaves, he goes over to Mr. Nebbercracker's house and rants at it while stepping on the lawn and ripping the grass off it. Suddenly, a kite appears at the door. Recognising it as his long-lost kite, he attempts to retrieve it, only to be swallowed up by the house.

DJ and Chowder meet at the construction site.Chowder seems to be fascinated by what DJ is saying, but is distracted by the machinery, in which all the keys have been left. He tries to turn one on but freaks out. They go to the house that night and Chowder crawls across the lawn. He runs into a bottle that Bones had thrown earlier that possibly prompted the house to eat Bones. The lawn swallows the bottle quickly. Chowder goes up to the house, imitates Mr. Nebbercracker, and tries to ring its doorbell and run, but the house comes to life and attempts to eat Chowder. They run across the road and spend the rest of the night in DJ's room watching the house until 8:30 in the morning. The house shows no detectable movement all night. Zee comes up after buying some Halloween candy from a girl named Jenny (Locke). Zee is disgusted when DJ informs her they "haven't left the room all night. Not even to go to the bathroom. Don't drink that," indicating a bottle that Zee picked up, the contents of which appear to be Mountain Dew.

Across the road, Jenny is going to Mr. Nebbercracker's house to sell chocolates. The boys plead her to run away, but to no avail. The house sends her and her wagon of candy soaring into the air, using its sidewalk to do so. DJ and Chowder manage to catch Jenny before she is eaten by the house. Zee comes across the road with a phone and asks for Chowder, mentioning that his dad wanted him to call. Chowder takes the phone, frustrated. Zee asks after Bones, but hears that he has been eaten. Zee doesn't believe this; she drives off, searching for her boyfriend. DJ is left alone with Jenny. The two go up into DJ's room, where Chowder tells his father to 'kiss his hairy butt' over the phone. Jenny looks out the window and sees a small dog sniffing on the lawn. This dog is about to mark its territory when the house quickly snatches the dog up in its entrance carpet and devours it. Jenny, shocked, decides to send for the police. The police officers Landers and Lester (Kevin James and Nick Cannon respectively) do not believe their story, mainly because the house, knowing that it would be unwise to devour anything in front of the police, does not react when DJ hops around on its lawn in an attempt to prove their story to the police.

The children then go to the house of a video-game addict nicknamed Skull (Heder). From him, they learn that the house is actually a monster known as "domus mactibilis" (deadly home in Latin), which is created when a human soul merges with a man-made structure, such as a house. They find out that the only way to 'kill' the house is to destroy its heart. After finding that no one will believe them when they tell of the house's new habit, the trio decide to put an end to it, using Skull's method. The three draw out a plan to destroy the house, after deciding that the furnace is the heart, as evidenced by the fact that smoke has been coming out of the chimney ever since Mr. Nebbercracker died. DJ explains his idea: they make a dummy full of cold medicine and send it into Mr. Nebbercracker's house, causing the house to eat it, cold medicine and all, putting it to sleep temporarily, thus giving them time to enter the house and put out the fire in the furnace. Chowder goes to his father's pharmacy and steals several bottles of the medicine and they quickly make the dummy.

The plan works perfectly: the vacuum is inches away from the house's waiting 'tongue' when the cops arrive. They run over the cord powering the vacuum and the house pulls in its tongue and closes the door. The two cops they asked earlier for help step out, and discover the cold medicine in the dummy. (Officer Landers tastes it, then takes a long swig.) Landers decides that the three are going to jail. After locking them in the car, Lester hears a sound from inside the house and the two go to check it out. A tree disarms Lester and then swings him into the house's waiting mouth. Seconds later, it also devours Landers. The kids watch, horrified, and the house soon also eats the police car, though the kids survive.

The group is trapped in the house and notice that the house is asleep and that it probably assumed that it had successfully gotten rid of the kids. DJ finds three things: several boxes of explosives, indicating that Mr. Nebbercracker used to work in the demolition industry, a pair of binoculars set up to rotate and face his house (and he realizes that the two were watching each other) and several photos on the wall. The photos depict a very large woman, and the three conclude that Mr. Nebbercracker did have a wife and did indeed eat her. Chowder, on the other hand, sees a bunch of glowing spheres hanging from the ceiling and screams to shoot it. The kids fire their water guns at it, but the house only opens its mouth and spits out water. Jenny figures that it must be the uvula. "Oh. So it's a girl house," Chowder figures. Jenny looks confused and informes him that the uvula stimulates the gag reflex and that everyone has one. The trio descends into the basement and see all the things Mr. Nebbercracker has taken. They see a locked circus-style cage. DJ, remembering the key Mr. Nebbercracker They see the body of Mrs. Nebbercracker (who apparently was once known as Constance the Giantess), covered in cement. They conclude that Mr. Nebbercracker couldn't have eaten his wife, as her entire body is buried in concrete. A shrine is built around her, confusing the children. DJ walks closer to it but trips. His nose lands right on hers, and the cement begins to collapse. All that is left of her is a skeleton, and the house wakes up. It looks around and spots the kids. A vent swallows Jenny, and giant Slinkies attack Chowder. DJ runs up the stairs, but they attack him. He manages to get out, but almost falls into the house's waiting 'jaws'. Chowder, being clumsy, falls in. He hangs onto a board for dear life. DJ reaches down to help him, but the tongue grabs him by the ankle and throws him in. He hangs onto Chowder's leg, and Jenny remembers the uvula. She runs up the stairs and jumps onto it. When the uvula hits the ceiling, the house promptly vomits them onto the lawn.

Just as DJ, feeling defeated and worthless, decides to go home, an ambulance comes to a screeching halt and knocks DJ down. DJ gets up and Mr. Nebbercracker comes out of the vehicle, his arm in a sling. He asks what day it is, and turns to the house, calling it "Honey". DJ goes up to Mr. Nebbercracker and says that he knows about Constance. Mr. Nebbercracker turns to the children, and starts telling a story.

Mr. Nebbercracker reveals how he met a morbidly obese lady named Constance (Turner), a member of the sideshow cast, at a circus and fell in love with her. He goes to her trailer in the night and they literally get hitched: he hitches her trailer up to his truck and drives her away. They moved to a new land to have a new house built just for the two of them. Any children that came by would taunt and throw things at Constance, who would be very angry. Thus, Constance, who wouldn't listen to Mr. Nebbercracker's explanation that the children were just being children, grew to hate children. Fending off eggs and other projectiles one day from the kids, Constance staggered to the edge of the foundation and accidentally fell to her death in the cellar many feet below, where she was swallowed up by cement. A saddened Mr. Nebbercracker finishes the house, because he knew Constance would have wanted that. Over the years, the house has, after Constance's death, acquired the lady's dislike of children, attacking any child who approaches. To protect the children, Mr. Nebbercracker pretended to be a child-hating old man who charges at children and even threatens their lives to keep them away from the house — especially during Halloween.

According to Mr. Nebbercracker, it is time for the house to be destroyed. The house overhears, and becomes very angry. It rips two trees out of the ground, the tops becoming attached to the house, giving it two arms/legs. The house roars at them and they run in fear to the construction lot where Chowder and DJ met earlier. Mr. Nebbercracker remains in his position, exhausted. Just as they seem doomed, a brick is thrown at the roof of the house. It is Mr. Nebbercracker, and the house turns to attack. It then realizes that it doesn't want to eat him. He pats the stoop and takes out a stick of dynamite. Lighting a match on her step, he prays that it's the right thing to do, but the house is infuriated and snatches him up. It seems to be the end of Mr. Nebbercracker when a backhoe drives into the house. Chowder has climbed onto a machine in the construction yard, remembering that they left the keys in the vehicles. He leads the house to the edge of the hole where the foundation was to be put in. Mr. Nebbercracker, too exhausted to continue, hands DJ the dynamite and a handful of matches. Meanwhile, the house tumbles into the gravel pit as well as Chowder, and eventually shatters to pieces. Chowder believes he's won, but ultimately, the house reforms, now nothing more than a gigantic mass of wood with legs, and attacks them at the construction site. DJ has to climb up a crane and throw a stick of dynamite into the house's chimney. DJ is scared and doesn't think he can achieve the task, but Jenny kisses him as an act of encouragement. He lowers himself down onto the hook and tells Jenny to light the dynamite and hand it to him. The hook suddenly lurches and DJ is sent falling, but the cable tightens and he begins swinging like a pendulum. Jenny lights the dynamite and throws it to him. Meanwhile, Chowder is running from the house like a maniac. The house snaps its 'jaws' at him, and manages to pick him up by his cape. Frantically, he unties it and continues running. DJ swings overhead and throws the dynamite down the house's chimney and is destroyed. DJ swings by and grabs Chowder and they both jump into a trench where the explosion roars over them. Jenny avoids it because the crane is too high. After they reunite, (ignoring Chowder's motion to help him out of the trench) DJ hears someone laughing quietly. They see a wispy form of Constance dancing with Mr. Nebbercracker, until she fades away to nothing. Mr. Nebbercracker collapses, and starts to weep. DJ apologizes for destroying his house. Mr. Nebbercracker exclaims that they've been trapped for forty-five long years, and he's freed them, it previously being that Constance's spirit was trapped inside the house and Mr. Nebbercracker felt he couldn't leave her, lest she eat everybody in town.

It is now time to trick or treat, and Chowder, DJ, and Jenny are helping Mr. Nebbercracker to return the children's toys to them. Jenny hugs the boys and leaves, mentioning that the three should hang out sometime very soon. DJ's parents arrive and figures that they are being dirty pirates for Halloween. After some basketball, the two race through the neighborhood for some candy.

During the credits, it is shown that everyone that was eaten by the house steps out of the basement unharmed, and that Bones and Zee are not together anymore, since she has decided to go out with Skull.

[edit] Production

[edit] Cast

• Steve Buscemi as Nebbercracker
• Mitchel Musso as Douglas J. "D.J." Walters
• Riley Quinn as Rolf
• Sam Lerner as Charles "Chowder" Wilson
• Spencer Locke as Jenny Bennett
• Jason Lee as Bones
• Jon Heder as Reginald “Skull” Skulinski
• Maggie Gyllenhaal as Elizabeth "Zee"
• Kevin James as Officer Landers
• Nick Cannon as Officer Lister
• Catherine O'Hara as DJ's Mom (Mrs. Walters)
• Fred Willard as D.J.'s Dad (Mr. Walters)
• Kathleen Turner as Constance
• Ryan Newman as Little Girl

[edit] Performance capture

All of the film's character animation is at least partially derived from a complex motion capture process dubbed performance capture. This process was pioneered by Robert Zemeckis on his film The Polar Express, also produced by Sony Pictures Imageworks.^[1] To avoid criticism from audiences and avoid the same fate as Polar Express, the animation and facial looks have been "toned down" from ultra-photorealistic looks so the audience is not "creeped out" (Uncanny Valley).

[edit] Music

The trailer prominently features the main theme to Beetlejuice, however, this film is not connected in any way with that film (other than Catherine O'Hara's appearances in both films). "Halloween" by Siouxsie and the Banshees plays over the credits. Velvet Revolver had announced that they were contributing a song entitled "The House is Alive" to the movie, but is not included. The song is rumored to appear on their upcoming album Libertad. Fountains of Wayne wrote a song entitle "Monster House" for the movie which also was not used, but it may appear in their next album or the movie soundtrack album.

The score utilizes a large orchestra, as well as piano, percussions, electronic sampled sounds, and the electronic instrument known as the theremin. The score hearkens back to "Old Hollywood" with its rich, dense orchestral score, and the theremin adds a touch of Hitchcock's "Spellbound."

[edit] Reception

Overall, the film received positive reviews, with the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate site giving it a "Fresh" 70%. Michael Medved called Monster House "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."^[2] Dissenting critics included as Frank Lovece of Film Journal International, who praised director Gil Kenan as "a talent to watch" but berated the "internal logic [that] keeps changing.... DJ'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."^[3]

Locus Online reviewers Howard Waldrop and Lawrence Person assert that the movie bears a suspicious resemblance to Joe R. Lansdale and Doug Potter's Something Lumber This Way Comes^[4], although the story to the movie was copyrighted ten years prior to the release, and four years before the book came out.

Although the film was not commercially well received in Japan it has proven hugely popular with foreigners living and working there. An affiliate of The Drum magazine, (a magazine for foreigners in Miyagi prefecture), described it as "The film you have all been waiting for"

[edit] Worldwide Ratings

• Philippines - G
• United Kingdom - PG 'Contains scary scenes and mild language'

[edit] Box office