Featured Blu-ray and DVD Review: The House with a Clock in its Walls
December 17, 2018
The House with a Clock in its Walls - Buy from Amazon: DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, or 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack
The House with a Clock in its Walls is one of two fantasy family films starring Jack Black that came out this fall. I got solicitations for screeners for both films, but I passed on Goosebumps 2 and choose to review this film instead. Did I make the right call?
Lewis Barnavelt’s parents just died and he’s being sent to his only living relative, his uncle Jonathan Barnavelt. When Lewis arrives in New Zebedee by bus, Jonathan is there to greet him. Jonathan is a little odd, but that’s okay, because so it Lewis. The the clock bells chime in the town square, Jonathan is temporarily mesmerized. When they get home, there are a ton of clocks throughout the house. Even Lewis realizes this is out of the ordinary, but Jonathan says there are the perfect amount of clocks. Just then, Florence Zimmerman climbs out of one of those clocks and she and Johnathan get into a sparring contest of insults and then Johnathan asks her to make cookies for dinner. It’s a weird house with weird rules, or to be more accurate, a weird lack of rules.
When Jonathan shows Lewis to his room, he asks Lewis about his Magic 8-Ball, in a dismissive way. This upsets Lewis, because the Magic 8-Ball and it is all he has to remember his parents by. That night, while everyone is supposed to be asleep, Lewis hears strange noises, including faint ticking sounds, and goes to investigate, only to see Jonathan listening to the walls. The next day he has to go to school, but this isn’t a refuge from the weirdness at home. He’s a bit of a social outcast and draws the attention of some bullies. It’s not all bad. A couple of his classmates, Tarby and Rose, seem nice. Although Tarby does tell Lewis about the nasty reputation his uncle’s house has and how his uncle might be an axe murderer.
That night, Lewis has a dream about his mom, who tells him uncle Jonathan is hiding something from him and that he’s in danger. She tells him in order to protect himself, he needs to get the book and then the key. He decides to look around for it and while doing so sees his uncle hacking the wall with an axe. The dream with his mom and what Tarby said the day before is enough to convince Lewis he’s about to be axe murdered, so he packs his suitcase and runs away. However, the house won’t let him leave. Jonathan gets to him and tries to calm him down and reveals what he’s actually been hiding from him.
Jonathan is a warlock, a subpar warlock. Florence Zimmerman, on the other hand, has real magical talent. Unfortunately, not even she is as much power as Isaac Izard had. He’s another warlock and he and his wife, Selena, previously owned the house and they were the ones to installed the clock in its walls. Lewis asks if anyone could become a warlock and after a little pestering, Jonathan agrees to teach him, with Florence’s help. However, he does keep one thing secret, the real reason why there is a clock in the walls and what it is really capable of doing.
Those details are too deep into spoiler territory.
The House with a Clock in its Walls is a hard movie to review, because it is the textbook definition of solidly average. Don’t get me wrong, the acting is solid from both the adults and the child actors, but the script they are given is so average that it is hard for the performances to really stand out. Jack Black is a natural for roles like this, while Kyle MacLachlan gets to ham it up as the bad guy. It’s no surprise that Cate Blanchett is amazing in this movie. I can’t think of a movie where she wasn’t amazing. Owen Wilder Vaccaro is a real find as a child star.
The film doesn’t reach its full potential for a few reasons, a couple of which are related to the source material. The book it is based on came out in 1973 and what would have been seen as fresh and original then comes off as predictable now. The same thing happened to John Carter. It’s unfair, but there’s nothing you can do about that. Secondly, the book is the first of a series of twelve books. Clearly Universal is hoping to turn as many of these into movies as possible and the film spends a lot of time world building, which hurts the pacing of the plot.
Extras begin with an audio commentary track with the director, Eli Roth, and one of the stars, Jack Black. Up next is an alternate beginning / ending, deleted scenes, and outtakes with a combined running time of 18 minutes. The first two also have an optional audio commentary track with the same pair from the movie track.
There are also ten featurettes, some of which are multi-part in nature. These include featurettes on the main cast, production design, the special effects, adapting the book, general making-of featurettes, behind-the-scenes, etc. The total running time is 48 minutes, so each section is quite short, but it does add up to a significant amount of extras.
Overall, I think The House with a Clock in its Walls will entertain kids about the same age as Lewis is—about 10 years old. I think parents will have an okay time watching it with their kids. On the other hand, I don’t think it has enough crossover appeal for adults to be worth picking up, even with the extras on the DVD / Blu-ray / 4K Ultra HD. I’m glad I got to a chance to watch the film, but I don’t think I will be watching it again.
Video on Demand
The Movie
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, The House with a Clock in its Walls, Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Kyle MacLachlan, Eli Roth, Lorenza Izzo, Sunny Suljic, Owen Wilder Vaccaro, Vanessa Anne Williams