The House with a Clock in its Walls

Year 12, Day 302 - 10/28/20 - Movie #3,686

BEFORE: The month of October is winding down, just two films (and one skip day) after today.  I've reached the Jack Black portion of the year, with him carrying over from "Goosebumps 2" and it's probably pretty easy to see where I'll be tomorrow.  (Hmm, what other film was Jack Black that was released in 2019?). Another hint, it's a sequel - in fact, exactly half of my October films are sequels (or follow-ups or re-boots in some way).  12 original films, like today's, and 12 sequels - yes, I'm counting four of the five "Twilight" films in that math, because 4 out of 5 were sequels, even though I binge-watched the whole series this month, as God (?) intended - but only because I put that series off for SO long.  

Really, that shouldn't matter, sequel or no, because it's all grist for the mill at this point - just as HOW I watch each film shouldn't matter, but I track all that anyway.  I'd love to find out that cable isn't worth the money any more, and that I could, possibly, watch whatever movie I want whenever I want with the right combination of streaming services.  I'd dump Spectrum cable in a heartbeat if that were true, but I don't think as a movie-watching society that we're quite there yet.  Maybe I'm just old school, but I like making DVDs.  I like having a file on my DVR that will stay there until I'm ready to watch it, and it's not going to disappear until I say so.  (Umm, unless the drive crashes or I accidentally push the wrong button when I'm nodding off.  Could happen.)

Which leads to an interesting question, what is the streaming universe going to look like in 2 years, or 5 or even 10?  Nobody in 2010 could have imagined that Netflix and Disney and Amazon would be the big players (and to a lesser extent, Hulu and the new HBO Max and soon, Paramount/CBS).  Who's in charge of what's appearing where, if anyone?  Who's keeping track of it all?  I've often Googled a movie's title to find out where it's available and found that the information provided is wrong or incomplete, so how do we get a proper channel guide for the streaming universe, similar to the ones we have for cable?  Just wondering out loud.  

THE PLOT: A young orphan aids his magical uncle in locating a clock with the power to bring about the end of the world.  

AFTER: I'm back on spooky real estate tonight, which is kind of where I started, with the semi-haunted "Cabin in the Woods".  There were also haunted houses seen in "The Woman in Black", "The Addams Family" and "It: Chapter Two".  Let's not forget the haunted Overlook Hotel in "The Shining", and maybe if I expand the field a little bit we can count the dance studio with secrets in "Suspiria" and even "The Dark Tower".  But last night in "Goosebumps 2", there was a house that was decrepit and contained the magic book, but that's not really haunted, per se.  Still, it's definitely a running theme for this month. 

I think this film kind of proves my point about screenwriters not being in touch with the activities of modern school children, because this is set back in the year 1955, and that just seems a lot more in-line with Hollywood's vision of the average American school system.  Kids today are learning on laptops and tablets and taking classes on how to code web-sites, but if you watch current movies, you might think it's all still about book reports (like, what's a BOOK) and building stupid dioramas and science projects where they pour baking soda into a mock volcano.  The junior high science fairs these days are probably more likely to feature gene-splicing and tracking virus mutations, and if a science teacher sees another fake volcano, he'd probably shoot himself.  But moving the setting back to the 1950's seems to nearly take care of any problems there.  Though there's notable integration in the classrooms seen here, and I'm not sure Michigan was that liberal back in 1955.  

Lewis is a young boy who moves to Michigan after his parents die in a car crash, and his uncle Jonathan offers to take him in.  This means cookies for dinner are fine, Lewis can stay up as late as he wants, and oh, yeah, his uncle's a crazy warlock.  But he's being driven crazy by a ticking sound coming from the house's walls - allegedly, I didn't even hear it, but maybe I missed it.  Anyway, there's an odd plot point here where Jonathan has like a ton of clocks in the house, and the reason is so that he WON'T hear the clock that's hidden that's driving him crazy.  But then, umm, doesn't the sound of all the other clocks drive him crazy?  The more I think about this, the less sense it appears to make.  Like, if you WANT to find the clock that's ticking, then you WANT TO HEAR IT, and not the sound of the hundred other clocks you bought to have around. RIGHT?

Somehow, the whole house is a giant clock, or contains a giant clock, or there's a clock hidden in it.  Again, this is extremely unclear and confusing.  Some nights uncle Jonathan will roam around with an ax, and make holes in the wall in random places, trying to find the clock that he can no longer hear, or something.  Eventually we learn that the clock was placed in the house by Jonathan's old magician partner, Isaac Izard, who was also a warlock, but is now deceased, and the clock is counting down to something, nobody knows what, but it just can't be anything good.  Clearly there's a time limit for finding the clock, but nobody knows how much time is left, because they can't find the clock!  Ooh, a paradox!  

Meanwhile, Lewis has trouble fitting in at school, because bullies, except one of the bullies has a broken wrist and can't play football, so he needs Lewis to pitch baseballs to him.  Lewis might make more friends at school if only he's stop wearing those stupid aviator goggles, but really, what's the chance of that happening?  (I also wish screenwriters would stop confusing "being nerdy" with "not dressing well" or "not having a clue how to fit in")  The fact that Lewis has memorized the dictionary is probably also holding him back in the socializing department.  Hang in there, Lewis, it gets better for nerds, but probably not until the early 2000's. 

Lewis, while becoming a young practitioner of magic spells (what's the matter, he wasn't geeky enough BEFORE, with the goggles and the dictionary stuff and the Magic 8-Ball that he asks all his questions?) tries to impress his school friend by casting a forbidden necromancy spell, and that's where things really go wrong.  What a contrivance, though, that he manages to bring back the WORST possible person to life, the one who knows where the clock is and how to access it, and make it do what it's supposed to do.  Actually, this is all a bit unclear, too, because was the clock going to do THAT anyway when it finished it countdown, or did it always need a little help?  This raises a bunch of questions about fate and coincidence and whether everything happens for a reason, but unfortunately the film doesn't seem interested in providing any answers here, I'm not even sure it's aware of the questions.  A lot of stuff seems to get glossed over, that's all I'm saying.  

Plus, and big NITPICK POINT here, how do you have a hidden room like that in a house?  I can see if a hidden room is deep on the inside, maybe surrounded on all four sides by different rooms, and accessible by a secret door, but if that room has windows, how hidden could it possibly be?  If you're a homeowner, I don't care how big your house is, or how many rooms it has, but you make it your business to know how many rooms it has.  I have dreams sometimes where I'm exploring a new house and I keep finding room after room that I didn't know was already there, but that just can't happen in reality, especially, again, if those rooms have windows, and you can look into them as you walk around the outside of the house.  Saying something like, "Wait, there's an observatory in my house?  Where is it?" is patently ridiculous, if you think about it.  

But it's really more like a fun haunted house here, the chairs move around and the stained-glass windows change to predict the future, and then there's that whole clock thing.  It's a bit more like "Pee-Wee's Haunted Playhouse", which I suppose is what you get when you let Eli Roth direct a family film.  Yeah, that happened. 

Also starring Cate Blanchett (last seen in "Where'd You Go, Bernadette"), Owen Vaccaro (last seen in "Daddy's Home 2"), Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Renée Elise Goldsberry (last seen in "Sisters"), Sunny Suljic (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Colleen Camp (last seen in "In Good Company"), Lorenza Izzo (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Vanessa Anne Williams, Braxton Bjerken (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Christian Calloway, Alli Beckman, with a cameo from Eli Roth (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 kids in line at the drinking fountain (umm, how unsanitary...)