Monster House

Written 28 July 2006

Warning: This film review reveals some of the plot of the movie.

Tonight I went to see an animated movie called Monster House. This is not really a kids movie and not really and adults movie ... it's kind of in between. I think children would enjoy it, and I know adults will like it --- I sure did.

I'm going to begin with a rant. Who had the "brilliant" idea of showing 7 commercials and 6 previews before a movie starts? Who is the idiot who thinks that charging $9 for a movie "entitles" us to be honored with all of these advertisements? It's absolutely infuriating that we get charged good money to see a movie, then get plastered with ads on top of it. Okay, I'm done with my rant now.

Monster house begins with a young boy who is spying on his old neighbor in order to find out why he acts so strange. You see, the old guy is scaring children who venture onto his property and stealing their toys. He's a very mean old man, cranky as all get out.

The plot goes a little slowly for the first half of the show, as the plot gets built up and the characters are introduced. Don't fall asleep and please don't unbuckle your seat belts as when the it does pick up - the pace really moves.

You see, the old man has a secret and the boy and his friend (and later a young girl as well) are tasked with finding it out. This secret becomes very important when the old man "dies" and the house itself becomes very hostile, eating a dog, the babysitters boyfriend and two police officers.

But it gets worse. You see, tomorrow is Halloween, and hundreds of children will venture onto the porch of this child-eating house looking for candy. In the words of the boy, "it'll be a bloodbath!"

The three must stop the carnage, and they come up with a wild scheme involving sough syrup and a vacuum cleaner, a scheme that goes wrong and results in the policemen being the main course for dinner.

The action picks up as they venture into the house itself, find the secret and get chased all over town, and finally defeat the monster. These last scenes are wonderfully done and I found the monster very believable, and if I was a child it would have scared the daylights out of me.

For the life of me, I do not understand why this movie was released in July. It should have been released in October, just before Halloween.

I would definitely recommend the movie to anyone. It will be a little frightening to the younger folks in the audience, but not horribly so.