"I want to show you what a little weird can do."
Hello everyone!
Now, for those of us who don't really feel native to the holiday, this is the day of the year when ghosts, ghouls and witches come out to play.
For the old continent it's mostly a day to celebrate Reformation, but on the new one it's about parties and having fun (it seems to be the same with younger generations here as well but, as someone who saw the ascent of Halloween and watched the thing develop, I can honestly say I feel old LOL).
For me, personally, I don't particularly feel any sort of way about Halloween. Possibly because we have Mardi Gras here in February, but also because I don't like dressing up.
I do, however, enjoy some of the other media that gets released during this time of year, and I thought I'd throw it back a little for tonight's post.
Five years back, to be precise. To a small little movie called The House with a Clock in its Walls.
I don't really have anything related to this anywhere on my blog, not counting some other Jack Black things I reviewed, so there aren't any links down at the bottom of the page.
And oh, yes, Jack Black stars in this one. Naturally.
Who else is going to play the mysterious and slightly kooky uncle but him?
Our story begins in 1955 when little Lewis is orphaned after his parents pass away in a car accident, and receives a letter from a hithertho-unknown uncle, his mother's older brother, who brings him over to his town to live there with him.
Lewis initially thinks this is grand, because his uncle Jonathan has no rules, he can do whatever he wants, eat chocolate chip cookies as much as he wants, and he gets to watch his uncle verbally spar with his neighbour and best friend, Florence Zimmerman (played by the always gorgeous Cate Blanchett).
Of course things aren't easy, because one, Lewis is the new kid at school, and two, he loves reading dictionaries and learning direct quotes from these books, so he's just a little weird.
He does, however, befriend a boy named Tarby, or at the very least Tarby befriends him, and for the uninitiated, Tarby is played by our very own Sunny Suljic, he of Atreus and God of War fame. This should at least give you some hints or clues as to how this is going to go.
ANYWAY, Lewis starts noticing weird things: his uncle wandering around at night, whispering with his neighbour about something, the house seemingly changing things, until it all comes to a head one night when Jonathan attacks a segment of the wall with an axe, prompting Lewis to want to escape - and the house to try and stop him.
Jonathan caves and explains he's a warlock, but that, equally, the house used to belong to a different warloc, Isaac, who died performing some sort of blood magic, and that since then Jonathan's been searching for the clock that's ticking inside the house walls.
The same clock, incidentally, that Lewis himself can also hear, making this a bit more dangerous right off the bat.
Florence being a witch too comes as no surprise, and the two adults embark on an endeavour to train young Lewis to become like them, which makes for a fun little segment where we get to see some spectacular magical misses, but also the bonding between the three characters.
Then things start going slightly sideways as Tarby wins class president, dumps Lewis like a bad habit (as a girl on the playground points out, he's an ass and always has been), and makes said Lewis want to regain their friendship.
To all the savvier viewers, we know this was never a friendship, but, ya know.
So to do so, he reveals to Tarby about training to become a warlock, invites him to the house, and naturally Tarby goes for the one thing Jonathan has a rule about: the locked cabinet which he forbade Lewis from ever opening. It reveals a book about necromancy, and of course Lewis wants to impress Tarby, so they head to the local cemetery with the book where Lewis does, in fact, bring someone back.
He just doesn't know WHO, but Jonathan, after seeing how the house is starting to misbehave, goes to investigate and realizes that someone raised ISAAC.
This spells trouble, especially as he'd found a secret room inside the house with maps and plans which he can't read, but he and Florence speculate it has to be some sort of doomsday thing because Isaac was all doom and gloom. She tells as much to Lewis when she takes him home with her after Jonathan deduces the house isn't safe for the kid anymore (in a beautiful sequence where she calls her best friend a coward, because being a parent is being afraid 24/7 but doing it anyway).
She explains Jonathan and Isaac used to be best friends, but after the war, during which Isaac was lost in the Black Forest for a bit, he came back changed, and ended up dying performing his experiment. They both thought he'd killed his wife Selena to achieve his goal, a key made out of human bone, but it turns out it's not that simple.
See, first, Lewis wants to help, especially as it's HIS fault that Isaac's back, so he returns to the house and recognizes how to read the cypher on the charts which stumps both Jonathan and Florence; but Lewis is an avid fan of Captain Midnight, and manages to decode the letters, which does in fact prove that Isaac built a doomsday clock into the walls of the house.
But the scale is unprecedented, and they're interrupted by Isaac himself, whom Lewis sees in the window of the neighbour's house, rushes to save said neighbour, only to have her be revealed as Selena, and the two reunited lovers eject Jonathan, Florence and Lewis from the house after explaining their plan:
the clock? Is a doomsday clock, alright, and it'll set time back to the beginning with no humans and no wars, erasing everything and everyone.
Our trio decide they need to venture back in, and with Florence's previously-broken magic now restored, they go to confront their enemies. Unfortunately, they don't manage to stop Isaac from starting the clock, and Jonathan gets turned into a baby in the process, but Lewis realizes he needs to let go of his pain over his parents' passing, so he uses the magic 8 ball to stop the clock's gears.
He then also zaps Isaac and Selena so they fall into the clock and disintegrate, and everything goes back to normal, including previously magically-changed pets.
Our trio decide they're going to be a family together, after having survived all this, and it's especially meaningful because you learn during the course of the movie that Florence is Jewish; with the year being 1955, knowing there had been a war before, that she ran to the States, and lost her family during the process ... you probably know what this means.
Anyway, the movie ends with Lewis impressing his classmates with a little jinx on a basketball, but elects to hang out with that girl from the playground who seems to have a crush on him, and happily joins Florence and Jonathan who come to pick him up from school, like any regular family.
And then they all live happily ever after, to the end of their witchy days!
Funny, with perfect comedic timing and with some really ridiculous pranks (pooping leafy lion, anyone?), this is a story about overcoming pain and finding family where you least expect it, with some save-the-world shenanigans thrown in for good measure.
The cast is wonderful, the story is tight enough, and with just the right amount of creepy when Azazel gets added into the mix as the one who gives Isaac the blueprints for the clock.
It's perfect for Halloween if you don't feel like watching anything truly gruesome, but would like a little suspense and just a hint of the macabre.
10/10 recommend!
xx
*images and video not mine
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