Secret world with perfect timing
The House With A Clock In Its Walls Cert: PG 1hr 44mins
T★★★★★
he House With A Clock In Its Walls is one of those films that reminds you of a lot of others. The mix of orphans and clocks summons Martin Scorsese’s Hugo instantly to mind, while blending orphans with sinister relatives gets you to Lemony Snicket even quicker. Magic textbooks and trainee boy wizards are pure Harry Potter, of course, while the curious combination of clocks and walking, talking furniture provide an unexpected reminder of Disney’s Beauty And The Beast.
But it’s the central presence of Jack Black that provides the loudest prompt, because what his latest film resembles more than anything is his 2015 offering,
Goosebumps. The good thing is
that The House With A Clock In
Its Walls is a lot better. Black – so often an overpowering presence – is better cast and more reined-in than usual (possibly having worked out that if he was acting opposite Cate Blanchett he’d have to raise his game), the central story makes a little more sense, and its director Eli Roth – hitherto a specialist in distinctly more adult scares – seems to have a more focused idea of who his target audience is.
For while Goosebumps featured a central character who was a teenager but then delivered the sort of fantasy fare that only a much younger audience would enjoy, The House With A Clock In Its Walls is about a newly orphaned ten-year-old boy – and that’s about the starting age for its target audience, bearing in mind that the blend of dark corridors, strange noises and creepy clockwork automata does get quite scary at times.
Our young hero is Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), who arrives in the town of New Zebedee to live with his kimono-wearing Uncle Jonathan (Black) soon after the death of his parents. Lewis already seems a rather lonely, self-contained little boy, with established eccentricities – he likes to wear aviator goggles and consults a fortune-telling novelty pool ball over difficult decisions – that are likely to hinder his chances of making new friends.
So when his uncle turns out to live in the big old Gothic house that this sort of American film can’t manage without, we fear the worst. Especially as it’s crammed with ticking clocks, a spooky organ that can play itself and stained-glass windows that move when you’re not looking. Even the pumpkin lanterns are there year-round.
But from the moment we meet Jonathan’s purple-clad and insult-trading best friend and neighbour, Mrs Zimmerman (Blanchett), we suspect all may not yet be lost for Lewis. For while Mrs Z can be scary at times, she’s also rather beautiful and kind.
And she makes it quite clear that there is nothing remotely ‘kissyfaced’ about her relationship with his uncle, ‘it’s…’
‘Platonic,’ completes Lewis, a word-loving boy who’s arrived with his own dictionary.
Now, if only the strange ticking noise in the walls would cease and Uncle Jonathan stop stalking the corridors at night armed with an axe, then Lewis could get on with his new life... But what sort of film would that make? This, after all, is a house with secrets, and Uncle J and Mrs Z have a few between them too.
Our magic-themed mystery, which comes complete with evil warlocks and incontinent topiary bushes (yes, really) is about to unfold.
By and large it’s pretty nicely done, as you’d expect from a film that includes Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment among its backers, and Kyle MacLachlan among its supporting cast. The screenplay is polished, the vital visual effects decent and the presence of the double Oscar-winning Blanchett adds real class.
The result is a film that definitely gets better as it goes along, but also gets scarier too. Parents – you’ve been warned.