Creepy movies for kids are back
Two new films bring chills to family fare.
Eli Roth is usually the filmmaker of choice to freak out adults with flesh-eating viruses (“Cabin Fever”), ritualistic cannibals (“The Green Inferno”) or underground weirdos who brutally torture backpackers (“Hostel”).
Now, with the witching season upon us, he’s doing one for the littlest horror fans.
“The House With a Clock in Its Walls” (in theaters Friday), an adaptation of John Bellairs’
1973 children’s novel, is by far the most family-friendly of Roth’s films, but it isn’t the only creepy flick aimed at youngsters this fall. Next month brings “Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween” (out Oct. 12), based on R.L. Stine’s books.
Watching horror movies is “a rite of passage” for kids, says “House” star Jack Black, who grew up adoring Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre short stories. “It gets you ready for the next stage, for the next level in life. You’ve got to be able to withstand a little bit of scare – that’s what life is all about.”
Set in 1955, “House” centers on 10-year-old orphan Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), who moves in with his eccentric Uncle Jonathan (Black) after his parents die. He soon discovers his new home is a creaky old place with all manners of creatures and a ticking clock within its walls that’s tied to a dead magician (Kyle MacLachlan).
While kids these days gravitate toward superheroes, “Star Wars” and animation, Roth saw a void for movies with a few more chills and thrills like those he loved as a youngster in the
1980s. The future filmmaker sneaked around his parents to watch VHS copies of forbidden R-rated flicks (“Re-Animator,” “Friday the 13th”) with his friends but would catch “Gremlins,” “The Goonies,” “Poltergeist” and other films on the big screen, where young protagonists dealt with mayhem.
“If you’re an adult and you love horror movies, you’re probably going to want your kids to love them, too. But you’re not going to take them to see ‘The Nun’ or ‘It’,” Roth says. “House,” though, aims to “show them the fun of scary movies.”
The “Goosebumps” books have been a gateway to horror for youngsters since the early 1990s, and the sequel focuses on kids dealing with evil puppet Slappy and Stine’s other literary monsters come to life.
Director Ari Sandelsays the “safe scare” was important in his “Goosebumps” movie, balancing something fearful with comedy – like having his characters run into Gummi bears that sprout fangs. “On every other day, you’re eating candy, but on Halloween, candy’s eating you,” Sandel says.
Roth has a similar scene in “House,” where Lewis, Jonathan and neighborhood witch Florence (Cate Blanchett) have to fend off sinister-looking pumpkins. “It’s just inherently ridiculous, but if you make them terrifying, it almost becomes too silly,” Roth says. “So finding the balance of Jack getting vomited (on) by a pumpkin, but then the pumpkins almost killing them, was tricky.”
For a movie that might be a little kid’s introduction to horror, it’s necessary to “take the pedal off the metal” when it comes to that fear factor, Black says, though Roth adds that the danger still has to be real.
What made “Gremlins” great was its viciously anarchic killer creatures, Roth says. “They do not play. They will chop you up. They will hot-wire your electric wheelchair and shoot you out the window. (And in ‘House’), it’s all fun and games until you raise an evil warlock from the ground. Then it’s serious.”