Monster House (film)

Monster House
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gil Kenan
Produced by	Jack Rapke Steve Starkey
Screenplay by	Dan Harmon Rob Schrab Pamela Pettler
Story by	Dan Harmon Rob Schrab
Starring	Steve Buscemi Nick Cannon Maggie Gyllenhaal Kevin James Jason Lee Catherine O'Hara Kathleen Turner Fred Willard
Music by	Douglas Pipes
Cinematography	Xavier Perez Grobet
Edited by	Fabienne Rawley Adam P. Scott
Production company	Relativity Media ImageMovers Amblin Entertainment
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release dates	July 21, 2006 (2006-07-21)
Running time	91 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$75 million[2]
Box office	$140.2 million[2]

Monster House is a 2006 American computer-animated children's^[3] horror film^[4] directed by Gil Kenan, produced by ImageMovers and Amblin Entertainment, and distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film stars Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jon Heder, Kevin James, Jason Lee, Catherine O'Hara, Kathleen Turner, and Fred Willard.

Executive produced by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, this is the first time since Back to the Future Part III that they have worked together. It is also the first time that Zemeckis and Spielberg both served as executive producers of a film. The film's characters are animated primarily utilizing performance capture, making it the second film to use the technology so extensively, following Zemeckis' The Polar Express.

Monster House received generally positive reviews from critics^[5] and grossed over $140 million worldwide.^[2] The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 79th Academy Awards, but lost to Happy Feet.

Plot

DJ Walters spies on his elderly neighbor, Horace Nebbercracker, who confiscates any item landing in his yard. DJ's parents go to a dentist convention, leaving him in the care of babysitter Elizabeth "Zee". DJ's best friend Charles "Chowder" visits, accidentally losing his basketball on Nebbercracker's lawn. DJ is caught by Nebbercracker while recovering it, who rages at him before apparently suffering a stroke and being taken away by an ambulance. That night, DJ receives mysterious phone calls from Nebbercracker's house with no one on the other end. DJ eavesdrops on Zee's boyfriend Bones, who tells Zee about losing his kite on Nebbercracker's lawn when he was young and that Nebbercracker supposedly ate his wife Constance. Later, Bones is driven out by Zee after he gets too fresh. He sees his kite in the doorway of Nebbercracker's house, but is consumed while retrieving it.

The next morning, a girl named Jenny is selling Halloween snacks. DJ and Chowder see her going to Nebbercracker's house, and rush out to catch her before she is eaten. Jenny calls the police, but officers Landers and Lester do not believe their story.

The trio seek advice from Reginald "Skull" Skulinski, a self-professed expert on the supernatural. They learn the house is a "Domus Mactabilis" (Latin for "deadly home"), created when a human soul merges with a structure. The only way to kill the house is to destroy its heart. They conclude that the heart must be the furnace, as DJ realizes the chimney has been smoking since Nebbercracker supposedly died. Chowder provides a cold medicine-filled dummy that should cause the house to sleep while they douse the furnace. Their plan is thwarted when Landers finds the medicine stolen from Chowder's father's pharmacy inside the dummy; the three kids are arrested. Landers and Lester place the trio in their car while they examine the house. The house consumes the police and the car. DJ, Chowder and Jenny escape the car but are trapped in the house.

The house falls asleep and the kids explore. They fall into the basement, finding toys accumulated from Nebbercracker's lawn, as well as a cage door that opens to a shrine containing the body of Nebbercracker's wife Constance the Giantess, buried in cement. The house realizes they are inside and attacks them. DJ, Chowder and Jenny force the house to expel them by grabbing its uvula. Nebbercracker arrives home, revealing that Constance's spirit inhabits the house. As a young man, Nebbercracker met Constance, an unwilling member of a circus freak show who hated children, falling in love with her despite her obesity. After helping her escape, they married and began building the house. One Halloween, as children tormented her due to her size, Constance tried chasing them away with an axe, but lost her footing and fell to her death in the basement with the cement burying her body. Nebbercracker finished the house after Constance's death, knowing it was what she would have wanted. Aware that Constance's spirit made the house come alive, Nebbercracker kept people away for their safety by pretending to hate children.

DJ tells Nebbercracker it is time to let Constance go. Enraged, the house breaks free from its foundation, chasing the group to a construction site. Nebbercracker attempts to distract the house so he can throw sticks of dynamite in, but the house notices and attempts to eat him. Chowder fights the house off with an excavator, causing it to fall into a pit. DJ is given the dynamite, and he and Jenny climb to the top of a crane while Chowder distracts the house. DJ throws the dynamite into the chimney, destroying the house. The trio see Nebbercracker with Constance's ghost before she fades away. DJ apologizes to Nebbercracker for the loss of his house and wife, but Nebbercracker thanks DJ and the kids for freeing him and Constance from being trapped for 45 years. That night, children in their Halloween costumes are lined up at the site of Nebbercracker's house, where DJ, Chowder and Jenny help him return the toys to their owners. Jenny's mother picks her up, and DJ and Chowder go trick-or-treating, which they previously felt they were too old for. Those who were eaten by the house emerge from the basement.

Cast

Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, and Mitchel Musso at the 34th Annie Awards red carpet at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California.

• Mitchel Musso as Dustin "DJ" Walters, a 12-year-old boy,^[6] who is known for spying on Nebbercracker through a telescope. He is treated like a baby and is often thought to be crazy.
• Sam Lerner as Charles "Chowder", a 12-year-old boy, who is DJ's best friend. He has a habit of acting slightly strange and immature.
• Spencer Locke as Jenny Bennett, an intelligent 12-year-old girl who attends a prestigious all-girls school called Westbook Prep. DJ and Chowder both have crushes on her, but she only returns DJ's affections.
• Steve Buscemi as Horace Nebbercracker, a former US Army "demolition squad" expert who lives across the street from DJ. He is known for stealing anything that lands on his lawn. It is later revealed that he was Constance's husband.
• Maggie Gyllenhaal as Elizabeth "Zee", DJ's punk babysitter. She is spiteful and, like his parents, treats DJ in a patronising manner.
• Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard as Mr. and Mrs. Walters, DJ's overprotective parents who treat their son in babyish ways.
• Jason Lee as Bones, Zee's ex-boyfriend. He takes great pleasure in bullying DJ and Chowder.
• Jon Heder as Reginald "Skull" Skulinski, a videogame-crazed comic geek and expert on the supernatural who once played an arcade game for 4 days straight on one quarter, a gallon of chocolate milk, and an adult diaper. He becomes Zee's boyfriend at the end of the movie.
• Kevin James as Officer Landers, a police officer and Officer Lester's partner. Landers is an experienced cop with a laid-back, sardonic, and deadpan personality.
• Nick Cannon as Officer Lester, a police officer who is Officer Landers' partner. Lester is a rookie on his first week.
• Kathleen Turner as Constance "the Giantess" Nebbercracker, a 675-pound woman who was featured against her will in a circus' freak show in the early 1960s. Horace Nebbercracker, having fallen in love with her, freed and married her. People (especially children) constantly mocked Constance because of her size, driving her to the point of fits of anger, which eventually led to her death and her spirit to be trapped within the house, causing it to come alive.

Production

Performance capture

The film was shot using performance capture, in which the actors performed the characters' movement while linked to sensors. This process was pioneered by Robert Zemeckis on his film The Polar Express, also produced by Sony Pictures Imageworks.^[7]

Soundtrack

Digital 3-D version

As with The Polar Express, a stereoscopic 3-D version of the film was created and had 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 was released in approximately 200 theaters equipped for new REAL D Cinema digital 3-D stereoscopic projection. The process was not based on film, but was purely digital. Since the original source material was "built" in virtual 3-D, it created a very rich stereoscopic environment. For the film's release, the studio nicknamed it Imageworks 3D.^[8]

Reception

Monster House grossed $73,661,010 in the United States and Canada, and $66,513,996 overseas, for a worldwide total of $140,175,006.^[2]

The film received generally positive reviews from critics. Based on 158 reviews collected by review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored a 74% approval rating, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Monster House welcomes kids and adults alike into a household full of smart, monstrous fun."^[5]

Ian Freer, writing for Empire, gave the film 4 out of 5 stars with the verdict, "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."^[9] Jane Boursaw of Common Sense Media also gave it 4 out of 5 stars and wrote, "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."^[10] Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel wrote, "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." He also gave it 4 out of 5 stars.^[11] Scott Bowles of USA Today observed, "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.^[12] 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."^[13] 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."^[14] 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 marvelously creepy animated feature directed by Gil Kenan."^[15]

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."^[16] 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.... [I]t 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."^[17]

The American Film Institute nominated Monster House for its Top 10 Animated Films list.^[18]

Awards and nominations

Video game

A video game based on the film, titled Monster House, was released by THQ on July 18, 2006 for PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS.^[23] Players can choose one of the three main characters from the film (voiced by the same actors), and explore new sections of the house, battling creatures with water blasters and other unique weapons.^[23]

References

• Columbia Pictures press release titled "Monster House: July 21, 2006" (offline)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Monster House (film).

• Official website
• Monster House at the Internet Movie Database
• Monster House at AllMovie
• Monster House at Box Office Mojo
• Monster House at Rotten Tomatoes