The House With A Clock In Its Walls

This review may contain spoilers!

There's a famous saying about making a film: The hardest things in a film to work with are kids and animals; the director should probably have heeded the kids warning. I would give The House With A Clock In Its Walls a 1.5/10.

Lorenza Izzo, who played the Mother, is a really nice sentimental point of connection and security for the young protagonist; Izzo does a stellar job at steadily shifting her scenes to a darker and more unnerving tone.

However, the best performance came from Cate Blanchett, who played Florence Zimmerman. Blanchett has a very refined poise throughout this piece, creating a role who is elegant and proper. It's really entertaining to see the chemistry between Blanchett and Black, watching the pair banter and quickfire dialogue between one another is a treat. What sets Blanchett apart so clearly in this film is how well she layers in and presents Florence's backstory. We can really hear her heartbreak over losing her family in the Nazi occupation of Paris, and the subsequent lack of self-confidence and outrage at Black for abandoning his own family make this a brilliant sub-plot. Not only is Cate Blanchett the heart of this film, but she also spends most of the feature carrying the entire production.

This whole film is pretty hard to redeem so I'll break down some of the key issues. For starters there's a lot of different genres at play that can make this a rather confusing film to watch; there are a number of horror, comedy and family film features all set to a fantasy backdrop. The film didn't really understand how to manage pacing either; dragging its feet for a long period before suddenly taking a massive leap forward in the section. The number of times exposition and story is presented through grainy flashback grows old pretty quickly too. The worst aspect of this film was just how much the film relied upon its child protagonist, this was not an actor who had the range to keep you hooked throughout. The cinematography impressed initially but then the camerawork grew very repetitive and recycled the placement of cameras a number of times. The special effects were plain ghastly and didn't align with the rest of the live-action set and performers; the hedge-lion or cartoonish armchair were serious eye-sores and whoever decided to put Jack Black's head on a baby body seriously needs to re-evaluate their creative decisions. The score for the film is cheesy, there is an attempt here to make music that sets up minor scares and spooky scenes but the rather camp melody doesn't lend itself very strongly to this effect.

Jack Black, who played Jonathan Barnavelt, seems like he's playing two different roles for most of the film: a serious warlock that the writer and director designed and Jack Black; the fact this role feels like he hasn't been worked on very much is a bit of a let down and makes the film hard to take seriously. Owen Vaccaro, who played Lewis Barnavelt, is one of the worst casting decisions that could have been made for the leading role; Vacarro has proven himself a lot over the last few years to be one of the really hard to watch performers in Hollywood and that just shines through in a leading role. Kyle MacLachlan and Renee Elise Goldsberry, who played Isaac Izard and Selena Izard respectively, really come into this film and ham up the antagonist roles big time; the pair seem so stiff and detached from one another that it's impossible to really view them as aligned, compelling villains. Colleen Camp, who played Mrs Hanchett, stumbles through this role; you really feel like Camp is only given the number of scenes she has for the Goldsberry reveal down the line. Sunny Suljic, who played Tarby Corrigan, gives a pretty stereotypical portrayal of a school bully; Suljic's ever dour expression and miserable attitude makes him difficult to perceive as this so-called popular class president. Vanessa Anne Williams, who played Rose Rita Pottinger, is one of the most unnecessary roles in the film which isn't necessarily due to Williams; this character just comes off as a forced last-minute romance sub-plot which is just plain uncomfortable to see Williams and Vaccaro play out.