I recently attended the World Premiere of "The House with a Clock in its Walls", and I am here to give you a rundown of what to expect in this movie and whether or not it's right for your child.
Title: The House with a Clock in its Walls
Rating: PG (for thematic elements including sorcery, some action, scary images, rude humor and language)
Genre: Comedy, Kids & Family, Science Fiction & Fantasy
In Theaters: September 21, 2018
Runtime: 104 minutes
Studio: Universal Pictures
Below is a brief overview of the movie, and possibly some slight spoilers. This is a children's movie, though, so the ending is pretty obvious.
The overall feeling of this movie is supposed to be fantasy/magic in the modern world of the 1950's. The premise is that a little boy moves in with his eccentric uncle after his parents are killed in a car crash. His uncle is a warlock, and proceeds to teach magic to the boy, Lewis, with the help of a witch Mrs. Zimmerman. The climax of the movie is them facing an evil warlock.
There are a few things in this movie I probably would not want to show my kids, especially if they were under 8 years old. The magic style in this movie is much more "satanic" than your average kid movie about magic. To compare, Harry Potter movies are mostly invented and original spells that do not require ritual for the most part. In the House with a Clock in its Walls, the magic is much more symbolic around things we would recognize as Pagan or as I mentioned earlier, Satanic. This is because there are vague shapes that definitely allude to pentagrams in circles, demons, devils and other creatures that have more real life basis in ancient magical mythology and religon. This is not a movie with unicorns and centaurs and fairies.
The bad guy in the movie, a warlock named Izard, makes a deal with a demon. There is a scene where he cuts his hand, it bleeds, and the demon leans down and licks the wound. I found it disturbing in a way I never found Voldemort to be disturbing.
There are some scenes with disturbing portraits on the walls of things that looked like demons or creatures of hell that were drawn in the 1500s. A picture where 3 people lie in coffins, predicting death.
There is a scene where the boy steals a magical book about necromancy and performs a blood ritual to bring back to life someone who has died. There is a star that loosely resembles a pentagram, and the boy has to cut his hand and drip blood to enact the spell.
A key needed for important things in the movie is made out of human bone. It is used to prick others hands for blood magic.
Jack Black and Cate Blanchett exchange light hearted insulting banter many times throughout the movie. They are silly things like calling her a purple turnip, or comparing body shapes to similar objects. I found these scenes mostly funny and too fast-passed for a child to remember any of the lines to repeat later at home.
There are scenes of bullying, too, but I think those are well handled in the end.
Lastly, I will address the language. There are about 5 swear words that I caught in the entire film. They are either hell or damn. The most obvious usage of swearing is when Jack Black, the uncle, yells at his nephew, "What the hell were you thinking?". That use of the word hell was a lot more obvious to me than a few of the other uses of swear words, which flowed in their sentences more and had other words around them to help dilute them from kids who might not be familiar with curse words yet.
Those are the most prominent scenes that come to mind. I found the movie to be fairly entertaining, but a little prolonged in parts. Older kids who like to be scared will definitely enjoy the movie. There were many parts where I jumped, and the kids around me. There are many funny scenes mixed throughout, as well as the stereotypical "kid being embarrassed in front of friends" scenes.
If you are looking for a more traditional take on magic in a fairly tame setting of a borderline PG/PG-13 movie, you will enjoy this film. It's adventure, comedy and magic all combined into one.
My rating: SKIP. If I knew what I did now about this film, I would give it a pass for my kids. I am on the protective side, and the very obvious use of swear words the few times they were used in this movie were more obvious to me than the swearing in PG-13 movies like Star Wars or Pirates of the Caribbean. We won't be buying this or watching it in the car until my kids are probably old enough to not want to watch a children's movie like this. The demon scene was also very disturbing. I think the kids in our group with me did like the movie, though, and didn't come home repeating new words or carving pentagrams everywhere, so if you do take your family to see this you will probably be fine. :)
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