Monster House (film)
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| Monster House | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster |
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| 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 ImageMovers Amblin Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | July 21, 2006 |
| Running time | 91 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US $75 million[1] |
| Gross revenue | Domestic: $73,661,010 Worldwide: $140,175,006 |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Monster House is an American 2006 computer animated suspense film released on July 21, 2006. Produced by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, this is the first time since Back to the Future Part III that both have been involved together. It is the very first time that Zemeckis and Spielberg both served as executive producers of a film together. 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. The film completed production in early 2006.
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[edit] Plot
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The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. |
The plot revolves around a preteen boy, Douglas J. "D.J." Walters (Mitchel Musso), who spends lots of his free time spying the house (which bears resemblance to that of Norman Bates from the Hitchcock film Psycho) across the street and its owner, Mr. Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi), a crotchety old man who terrorizes anyone who steps anywhere on his lawn or close to his house.
Even though DJ has seen Nebbercracker take several toys from kids that have stepped in his grounds, his parents (Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard), dismiss his comments easily as "kid talk". They then leave town for the weekend for a dental convention.
Charles "Chowder" (Sam Lerner), a chubby teenage boy who is DJ's best friend, shows up with a new basketball to play with DJ. When they lose it in Nebbercracker's lawn, DJ ventures there to recover it, thinking he might be asleep. However, he appears and grabs DJ lifting him and screaming at him. This causes him to collapse, seemingly dead, causing DJ to feel responsible. While Nebbercracker is being carried away by the paramedics, he drops a gold key on his lawn, which DJ scoops up.
DJ's apathetic Punk babysitter Elizabeth (Maggie Gyllenhaal), or "Zee" as she prefers to be called, arrives taking over the house and sending DJ to his room. At night, DJ gets a call apparently from Nebbercracker's house. Also, Zee's boyfriend, Bones (Jason Lee), comes over to the house and start making fun of DJ, scaring him.
After they leave, DJ calls Chowder and they agree to meet at a construction lot. As he leaves, he overhears Zee and Bones talking about Nebbercracker, and how he took a kite from Bones when he was a 10 year old. Bones also tells of how he has seen the old man speaking to his house and about a legend around town that he fattened up his wife and ate her. However, Zee ends up kicking him out after he pounces on her.
A drunk Bones goes over to Mr. Nebbercracker's house and rants at it while stepping on the lawn and ripping the grass off it. As he does it, the door opened revealing Bones' "awesome kite". He attempts to retrieve it, only to be swallowed up by the house.
After DJ meet Chowder, they decide to investigate the house. Chowder goes up to it, and tries to ring its doorbell and run, but the house comes to life and attempts to eat him. They run back to DJ's house and spend the night watching across the street.
The next morning, a girl named Jenny Bennet (Spencer Locke) comes up to DJ's house and sells Zee some Halloween chocolates. After giving the kids the chocolates, they see the same girl going to Mr. Nebbercracker's house to sell too. The boys run out to tell her to go away, but the house tries to eat her as well. However, DJ and Chowder manage to catch Jenny before she is eaten. When Zee sees them outside she goes out but doesn't believe anything and drives off to look for Bones.
Scared by what happened, they return to DJ's room where both kids try to impress Jenny, pretending to be older and more mature. As they keep watching the house, they see how a small dog is swallowed when he is about to pee on the lawn. 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 doesn't react to any teasing while the cops are in front of it. If anything they get in trouble because DJ attempted to make the house move by throwing a rock at it.
The children then go to an arcade and talk to a video-game addict nicknamed Skull (Jon Heder) looking for advice. 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 conclude that the house is Nebbercracker back from the dead and that the only way to 'kill' the house is to destroy its heart which Skull reveals is its only weakness. Upon returning to DJ's house, the three draw out a plan to destroy the house, after deciding that the furnace is the heart. They conclude this since smoke has been coming out of the chimney ever since Mr. Nebbercracker died.
The kids devise a plan to make a dummy using a vacuum, and filling it with cold medicine stolen from Chowder's father's pharmacy intending to "drug" the house. As the house is about to swallow the dummy, the cops arrive again prompting the house to "hide" again. Officer Landers decide to take the three kids to jail after discovering the stolen medicines. After putting them in the car, Lester hears a sound from inside the house and the two go investigate it. As they approach, a tree disarms Lester and the house swallows him. Seconds later, it also devours Landers. The kids watch, horrified, and the house soon also eats the police car, though the kids survive by jumping out the broken back window.
As the group is trapped inside the house, they notice it's asleep probably, assuming that it had gotten rid of the kids. They start to explore the house, finding boxes of explosives (indicating that Nebbercracker used to work in demolition), a pair of binoculars on the end of an extender facing DJ's house (meaning that he was watching DJ just like how DJ was watching him), and pictures of a very large woman, among other things. They conclude that Nebbercracker did have a wife. As they descend to the basement they find the stash of stolen toys Nebbercracker has taken from kids. They also see a locked circus-style cage. DJ opens it with the key the old man had dropped previously and they see the body of the wife covered in cement. She was once known as Constance the Giantess, and Nebbercracker had built a shrine around her after she died.
When DJ trips and lands on Constance's body, revealing her skeleton, the house wakes up and starts attacking the kids. However, they manage to escape as they force the house to "vomit" them outside by pulling a large lamp in the foyer that the house apparently uses as its uvula. As they are returning home, they see Nebbercracker being brought back to his house, with an arm in a sling. DJ confronts him and tells him how he knows about Constance. Nebbercracker breaks down and reveals his story.
Nebbercracker tells of how he met Constance (Kathleen Turner), a very obese lady who was an unwilling member of a circus freak show, and fell in love with her. After helping her escape they moved to a new land and he started building the house she always wanted. However, children taunted her for her weight and threw things at her, making her hate children. One day, as a consequence to her attacks, Constance lost her footing and as she fell from the edge of the foundation of the house she grabbed the lever of a cement mixer, which covered her in cement after she fell several meters below to her death.. A saddened Nebbercracker finished the house because he knew she would have wanted that.
Apparently, after Constance's death, her spirit possessed the house she wanted to see finished, further attacking any child who approaches. To protect the children from the wrath of his house, Mr. Nebbercracker pretended to be a child-hating old man to keep them away from the house — especially during Halloween. However, Nebbercracker feels it is time for the house to be destroyed. The house overhears, and becomes very angry attacking him and the kids.
As they flee from the now-walking house, they run to the construction lot where Chowder and DJ met earlier. Reluctantly, Nebbercracker attempts to throw a stick of dynamite inside the house, but he fails. Chowder then attacks the house with a backhoe saving Nebbercracker. this destroys the house's structure, but since the chimney is intact (which DJ realizes is the heart not the furnace after all), the body rebuilds itself, but as a mangled pile of wood and bricks with broken eye-windows. DJ then takes the dynamite and climbs with Jenny to the top of a crane to throw the stick down the house's chimney. As they attempt to do it, DJ is scared and doesn't think he can do it, but Jenny kisses him to encourage him.
DJ falls from the crane, clinging to the hook at the end of the cable. As he swings forth he throws the dynamite down the chimney, and as he swings back he grabs Chowder who was being attacked below, and they jump into a trench to protect from the explosion which destroys the house and since the chimney was destroyed this time it doesn't regenerate as its heart is gone. As the trio reunite, they see Nebbercracker dancing with the spirit of Constance as he let goes of her and she fades away. DJ apologizes to him and Nebbercracker thanks him for freeing him and Constance.
The film ends with the kids returning to the hole where the house was, and Chowder, DJ, and Jenny helping Nebbercracker return all the toys the house had taken from kids. Jenny is then picked up by her parents and she says that they should hang together again sometime. Chowder gets his ball back from Nebbercracker and after playing ball for a minute the two decide to go trick-or-treating after all.
During the credits, it is shown that everyone that was eaten by the house, including the dog, steps out of the basement bewildered but unharmed, and that Bones and Zee are not together anymore, since she has decided to go out with Skull. Bones doesn't care, as he has his long-lost kite back. Officers Landers and Lister decide to spend the rest of the night "inspecting" candy to shake off their little "experience" of being eaten. In the end, the house comes back to life, reminiscent of the conclusion to Clive Barker's "The Thief of Always."
[edit] Characters
- Douglas J. "DJ" Walters: (Mitchel Musso) A preteen boy who is known for spying on Nebbercracker through a telescope, so much that Chowder claims no one sits next to them at lunch. He is preteen yet sometimes acts, and is treated, like a younger boy and is often thought crazy as he is one of the few who knows the house is alive after he uses *69 on the house after he supposedly manslaughters Nebbercracker. He slightly resembles director Gil Kenan in terms of dark, greasy black hair. He destroys the house in the end by throwing a stick of dynamite down the chimney.
- Charles "Chowder": (Sam Lerner) DJ's chubby best friend. He has a habit of acting slightly strange and immature throughout the film and is somewhat of an idiot. He buys a new basketball at the beginning of the film and gets it back from Nebbercracker at the end. DJ is better than him at the sport. His father works at a pharmacy and his mother has a personal trainer whom she goes to the movies with the night DJ and Chowder are first attacked by the house. He fights the house off in a backhoe and helps defeat it in the end.
- Jenny Bennet: (Spencer Locke) An intelligent girl who attends an all-girls school named Westbook Prep and is the only girl to know of the house's possessed nature after it tries to eat her. Both DJ and Chowder have crushes on her but it is slightly obvious she prefers DJ. She sells chocolate and obtains $20 from Zee during her first appearance to save DJ's house from being egged and to raise money to secure a successful future. She helps DJ destroy the house by lighting the dynamite and kissing him giving him the courage he needs to throw it down the house's chimney (as well as his first kiss).
- Mr. Nebbercracker: (Steve Buscemi) An old man who lives across the street from DJ. He is known for stealing anything that lands on his lawn e.g. Chowder's ball, Eliza's (the little girl voiced by Ryan Newman) tricycle and Bones' kite, just to make sure that the house does not eat them. He is thought dead after interrogating DJ but he later shows up with just a broken arm. He ends up realizing that he needs to destroy the house and attempts to do so but fails and leaves the job to DJ, Chowder and Jenny. After the fight is over he dances with the now freed spirit of Constance, thanks the kids for setting him and Constance free and returns all of the stolen toys to their owners no longer needing to pretend to be a child-hating old man. His first name is revealed to be Horace according to the website, though this was not stated in the movie.
- Elizabeth "Zee": (Maggie Gyllenhaal) DJ's babysitter appears to be a charming girl who likes listening to songs by Olivia Newton-John but is actually a punk who wears black and is really into heavy metal. At the beginning, her boyfriend is Bones, but she later goes out with Skull (possibly to make Bones jealous). When she meets Jenny, it is revealed that she was kicked from Westbook Prep school. She is very similar to Vicky, from Fairly Odd Parents, except that she doesn't really torture DJ.
- DJ's Parents: (Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard) DJ's parents are both apparently dentists. His mother still treats him like a child and is scared when DJ's voice breaks for a moment, but his father is less concerned. He also used to spy with binoculars at the two beautiful Jensen twins.
- Bones: (Jason Lee) Zee's boyfriend at the beginning of the film whom she claims is in a band. He takes great pleasure in torturing DJ. When he was 10, he had a beloved kite that was stolen by Nebbercracker which the house later uses as bait to lure him in so she can eat him after tearing grass out of her lawn. He is returned after the house is destroyed and discovers Zee is now dating Skull but doesn't care because he now has his kite back.
- Reginald "Skull" Skulinski: (Jon Heder) A videogame-crazed comic geek who is known for playing on an arcade game called "Thou Art Dead" for 4 days on one quarter, a gallon of chocolate milk and an adult diaper. He provides DJ, Chowder and Jenny with information on how a house can become possessed and how to destroy it (target the heart). He starts going out with Elizabeth in a scene during the credits. This unlikely pairing of "videogame nerd and rock chick" is assumed to be an in-joke that Skull is a tribute to Ron Jeremy.
- Officers Landers and Lester: (Kevin James and Nick Cannon) Landers is an experienced cop with an easygoing, jokey manner, who thinks of the kid's case as just "a couple of teeter-toters hoped up on too many Pixie Sticks", while Lester is a rookie on his first week. He is the first adult to take the house as a serious threat, but he and Landers are later eaten by the house. A post-credit sequence shows that they emerged, shaken but unharmed, from the house-site after the film's climax.
- Constance the Giantess: (Kathleen Turner) A rather fat woman who used to be a novelty act in a circus who was freed by the love-struck Nebbercracker. While they were building a house, Constance was continuously hit by kids throwing eggs on Halloween and tried to attack them with an axe but fell backwards to the cellar while cement poured onto her resulting in her death. As a result, when the house was finished, the house was possessed by the child-hating soul of Constance. Ultimately, DJ destroys the house with the help of Chowder, Jenny and Nebbercracker himself and her spirit appears one last time to dance with Nebbercracker before finally moving on to the afterlife free after 45 years of possessing the house which trapped her there.
[edit] Voice cast
| Character | Voice actor |
|---|---|
| Douglas J. "D.J." Walters | Mitchel Musso |
| Charles "Chowder" | Sam Lerner |
| Jenny Bennet | Spencer Locke |
| Mr. Horace Nebbercracker | Steve Buscemi |
| Mrs. Walters (D.J.'s Mother) | Catherine O'Hara |
| Mr. Walters (D.J.'s Father) | Fred Willard |
| Elizabeth "Zee" | Maggie Gyllenhaal |
| Bones | Jason Lee |
| Reginald "Skull" Skulinski | Jon Heder
Physical Model appears to be Ron Jeremy |
| Officer Landers | Kevin James |
| Officer Lester | Nick Cannon |
| Constance the Giantess | Kathleen Turner |
| Little Girl | Ryan Newman |
[edit] Production
[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.[2] 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"[citation needed] (Uncanny Valley).
[edit] Monster House
The monster house was created by Sony Pictures Imageworks, as was the rest of the film. However, it may be possible that the house was done in stop-motion. Whether or not the house was actually stop-motion has yet to be confirmed.
[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 was rumored to appear on their album Libertad, but it was not included. 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 harkens back to "Old Hollywood" with its rich, dense orchestral score, and the theremin adds a touch of Hitchcock's "Spellbound."
[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 film was released on DVD in the US on October 24, 2006, and in the UK on Monday, December 11, 2006.
[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.[3]
Monster House premiered in North America at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 15, 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] Reception
The film grossed $73,661,010 domestically, and its worldwide gross is $140,175,006.[4]
The Rotten Tomatoes film-critics aggregate site gave the film 73% positive reviews.[5] 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."[6] Dissenting critics included 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."[7]
Locus Online reviewers Howard Waldrop and Lawrence Person assert that the movie resembles the Joe R. Lansdale and Doug Potter's Something Lumber This Way Comes,[8] although the story to the movie was copyrighted ten years prior to the release, and four years before the Lansdale/Potter's book came out[citation needed].
[edit] Awards
Monster House was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature of 2007. However, it lost to Happy Feet, along with Cars.
[edit] References to Other Movies
- The opening sequence, to which a leaf is followed from a tree to the ground is similar to the opening sequence of Forrest Gump, where the camera follows a falling feather. Robert Zemeckis, who served as executive producer on this film directed Forrest Gump.
- In another nod to Forrest Gump, Chowder repeats a line from the movie: "Jenny, I've always loved you", as the kids are being swallowed by the house.
[edit] Video Games
A tie-in Monster House video game was developed by A2M and published by THQ.
[edit] References
- ^ Box Office Mojo: Monster House (Retrieved on December 14, 2007)
- ^ The Animation of Monster House. Lost in the Plot. Retrieved on 2007-06-05.
- ^ For more info on the 3D technology used for Sony ImageWorks Monster House, visit: www.reald.com
- ^ Monster House at Box Office Mojo
- ^ Monster House at Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ Michael Medved: Movie Minute
- ^ Monster House
- ^ Locus Magazine
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Official site
- Monster House at the Internet Movie Database
- Monster House at Rotten Tomatoes
- Monster House at Box Office Mojo
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