Monster House was certainly not my first choice to go and watch but, under some peer pressure, I gave in to a certain curiosity about the movie. After all, computer-animated children’s horror movies must be a very small sub-genre, and there was an impressive list of star names associated with it, headed by Executive Co-Producers Roger Zemekis and Steven Spielberg.

Reader, I watched it.

So what’s it all about, anyway? Well, there’s this house you see. It likes to eat things – people, mostly. Formerly inhabited by an incredibly crotchety old man named Mr Nebbercracker (voiced by Steve Buscemi), it seems to be on some kind of static rampage. Young D.J (Michael Musso) has been suspicious of the house and its inhabitant for some time, and enlists the help of his dietetically challenged and less than intellectual friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) – his parents must have not wanted a kid to give him that name – and local girl scout come ruthless entrepreneur Jenny (Spencer Locke). Predictably both boys fall for her instantly and for no adequately identifiable reason. They try to enlist the help of the police in the form of Officers Landers and Lister (Kevin James and Nick Cannon), but not surprisingly their tale of a haunted house with a carpet that acts as a tongue, eating people, is put down to a Halloween joke. Add in D.J’s babysitter from hell, Zee (Maggie Gyllenhall), and her boyfriend from a deeper region of hell, Bones (Jason Lee) and the cast is almost complete. But of course there must be room for a mega-geek video games expert who attends comic and sci-fi conventions, and his name – or at least, what he’s called - shall be “Skull” (voiced by Jon Heder).

What the trio of somewhat less than intrepid children must do is somehow defeat the house before more people get eaten. How they are to do this turns out to be rather tricky…


The animation is very good in Monster House and is in a very distinctive style. The character movement is occasionally a little strange, almost as if the characters are actually marionettes, but this adds to rather than detracts from the mood of the movie. Mood is in fact what it’s all about – a suitably chilling musical score and plenty of shock-tactic cinematographic techniques kept many of the kids in the cinema on the edge of their seats for the full runtime of 91 minutes. It is aimed fair and square at the kids, and I’m sure will keep most 8-12 year olds very happy, give or take a couple of years either way. For myself I never really got into the movie that much, but then it’s not really my type of movie. The plot is actually rather clever, definitely enough to keep things going for an hour and a half. What I did enjoy about the movie were the little touches of humour, which most definitely were put there for the adults watching it. I very much doubt if most of the target audience understood more than a tenth of the humour, but they’d be wrapped up in the eeriness and plot anyway. Some of the scenes would probably be pretty scary for very young or sensitive children, but they’d probably get over it ok. There’s no gore or anything, just a lot of menacing spookiness and a few big explosions.

Overall I did actually rather enjoy Monster House, despite it not being my kind of movie. Pre-teens are very likely to absolutely love it.

Related Links

Top Ten Animated Movies

Top Ten Children's Movies



See also: My Top Ten Movies of 2006


Recommended: Yes