Product Details

• Released on: 2006-10-24
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC, Import
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 91 minutes

Amazon.com
The spooky shadows and eerie creaking of a rickety old house are brought to life via lush CGI in Monster House. A young boy named DJ has suspicions about the house across the street and the cranky old man (voiced by Steve Buscemi, Fargo) who lives there. When the old man has a heart attack and is carried away by an ambulance, DJ thinks the danger is over. Unfortunately, as he, his friend Chowder, and a candy-selling prep-school girl named Jenny discover, the house itself has plans--plans that include eating all the kids who'll be trick-or-treating that Halloween night. Monster House begins with some deliciously creepy scenes that will send chills down children's spines (and may be too intense for younger viewers); animated movies rarely make such effective use of what isn't being shown. The animation is vivid and detailed (though CGI still has a ways to go in capturing the full range of human facial expressions). But like most horror movies, the anticipation of horror is much more exciting than the horror itself; as the secrets of Monster House are revealed, the movie's thrills unravel. The noisy explosions at the end aren't half as much fun as the slow twitches of a few blades of grass in the movie's elegant beginning. --Bret Fetzer

Review
Monster House is a glorious return to form for exec producers (and masters of escapism) Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis -- and within the realm of computer animation, it's a welcome respite from the assembly line of movies in which zoo animals team up together. Gil Kenan's wellspring of imagination hearkens back to such Spielberg-produced classics as Gremlins and The Goonies, and it shares a motion-capture technology with Zemeckis' most recent directorial effort, The Polar Express. But Zemeckis has learned from the criticisms directed at Express. These animators have designed the characters as stylized versions of the vocal talent, rather than attempting the photo-realistic recreations of Express, which gave Tom Hanks a kind of zombie look. Monster House is indeed a technical marvel, its colors vibrant, its camera swooping through the frame (especially the opening, which follows a blowing leaf and a singing girl on a tricycle). But to focus just on that would short-change this terrific story, which is both funnier and scarier than children's movies usually get to be. In fact, so edgy is the script (by Dan Harmon, Pamela Pettler, and Rob Schrab), that it's almost more adult-oriented than child-oriented. There's real darkness and danger in this world of absentee parents, but there are also real children, real babysitters, and real video-game geeks -- this last a memorable cameo voiced by Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder. Bringing the marvelous dialogue to life are Maggie Gyllenhaal as the punked-out sitter, Jason Lee as her sketchy boyfriend, Steve Buscemi as a crotchety neighbor, and child actor Sam Lerner, whose spasmodic best friend falls somewhere between Eric Cartman and Chunk from The Goonies. The film's one failing is Nick Cannon's mouthy black police officer, whose character design and persona are uncharitable almost to the point of racist. Fortunately, the rest of Monster House is so good that it overpowers any such hiccups. Its star, the anthropomorphic mansion with the living lawn and the wooden jaws, is as creative a monster as Hollywood has produced in years. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

Synopsis
A suburban home has become physically animated by a vengeful human soul looking to stir up trouble from beyond the grave, and it's up to three adventurous kids from the neighborhood to do battle with the structural golem in this comically frightful tale, directed by Gil Kenan and featuring the voices of Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Kevin James. DJ Harvard (voice of Mitchel Musso) lives directly across the street from a most unusual house. A malevolent entity that longs to feed on the energy of the living, the once peaceful house that looms ominously outside of DJ's bedroom window would like nothing more than the chance to feast on the children of the neighborhood. As Halloween begins to draw near and the children of the neighborhood prepare for another long night of trick-or-treating, it appears as if it may be the house that is in for the biggest treat of all. Now, with the adults turning a deaf ear to DJ's strange findings, it's up to the brave young boy and his faithful friends Chowder (voice of Sam Lerner) and Jenny (Spencer Locke) to break through the barrier of the supernatural and defeat the powers of darkness before the house grows too powerful to fight. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

pretty fun and exciting 3d animated movie(though some kids under 13 may find it a bit intense)
in my my mind,this is a pretty good movie.it's a stop motion/CGI 3d
animation combination.it's a very fun movie.it would be easy to see how
scary it would be for young children,as there are some thrilling
sequences and scenes of peril.i think it might be too much for young
kids,and i would have rated it PG13,instead of just PG.i think most
kids over 13 would enjoy it.i thought the animation was well done and
the voice actors suited their characters well.the movie is very
entertaining and pretty fast paced.if you enjoyed this movie,you might
also like "ice Age and "Ice Age 2,as well "Toy Story 1 and 2"and "The
Incredibles".for me, "Monster House" is an 4/5

Great movie Destined to Become an Annual Halloween Favorite
I wasn't able to catch this in theater but was able to purchased this DVD yesterday and watch it with my entire family on Halloween night. After viewing this I thought it was good and frightening for the event. My kids were mesmerize buy it while my husband on the other hand was frighten by it (Just kidding). "Monster House" is defiantly good and cool for kids (7 years and up), yet certain to be a hit with grown-ups but defiantly not for the younger tot's. It manages to strike a chord with children by inhabiting the world they live in, full of creepy old men living in haunted houses, while at the same time, offering up enough scares and laughs to keep any 30 year old kid at heart thoroughly entertained.

The animation is nothing short of inspired, as the motion capture technology truly breathes life into the CGI animation. Facial expressions, "camera angles" and "tracking shots" are planned with painstaking detail; it's truly a sight to behold. You'll forget you're watching a 'cartoon' right from the fluttering leaf of the opening credits.

Not content to stop there, the filmmakers have added to the superb animation with equally superb writing and a cast to deliver those lines. Familiar voices (see the above credits) fill the adult characters with a lot of humor, even though each adult is given only about 5 minutes of screen time. Each actor does a lot with their 5 minutes, completely deserving of their pay check. The clever casting of Jon Heder makes this the first film to get full dynamite for his cameo, as he fits in perfectly as an arcade legend.

Still, with all this going for it, "Monster House" would have failed if its child roles didn't measure up. Fortunately, the three leads steal the show, aptly performing voice work that stretches from childhood tomfoolery to ghastly terror to puppy love, all within the same scene. Their honest approach to the scripts' clever and accurate depiction of children almost too old for trick or treating, yet not quite old enough to forget the bogeyman makes this a film that will certainly become a perennial Halloween favorite under the kids listing.

Spooky fun a Halloween story
Well told story with suspense pathos ignorant cops, unaware parents, bottles of pee, and a house with an appetite. Neighbors form bonds as they try to fathom the secrets of what motivates a house to consume kites and cars.

Then there is the great dialog "That must be its uvula." "Oh it is a girl house."

The film is animated which allows for many scenarios that are not physiologically possible. This actually adds to the spookiness. There is a socially relevant story with a positive ending.

However the there is nothing unique about the story or the characters. This makes it attractive for people that like formula films.