Monster House Blu-ray delivers great video and superb audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
Even for a 12-year old, D.J. Walters has a particularly overactive imagination. He is convinced
that his haggard and crabby neighbor Horace Nebbercracker, who terrorizes all the neighborhood
kids, is responsible for Mrs. Nebbercracker's mysterious disappearance. Any toy that touches
Nebbercracker's property, promptly disappears, swallowed up by the cavernous house in which
Horace lives. D.J. has seen it with his own eyes! But no one believes him, not even his best
friend, Chowder. What everyone does not know is D.J. is not imagining things. Everything he's
seen is absolutely true and it's about to get much worse than anything D.J could have
imagined.
Unless you live in one of those suburban developments where identical houses popped up
simultaneously overnight, nearly every neighborhood has one. It stands sunken and menacing in a
lot overgrown with weeds and tall grass. Summer heat and winter chills have curled its paint into
tiny, yellowing scrolls and perhaps an upstairs window has been boarded up with a garbage bag and
a few two-by-fours. To the adults, it's a communal eyesore. "Really," your dad might have said,
"someone needs to do something about this." The kids, however, tell tall tales passed down from
older siblings. It's haunted, they say. An old one-eyed witch lives there. If you lose a baseball over
the picket fence—forget about it—you'll never get it back. The brave or triple-dog-dared might
venture to ding-dong-ditch the doorbell, and if successful they become instant legends at lunchtime
cafeteria tables. The neighborhood haunted house is a spooky fixture of Americana, and Monster
House—a CGI spectacle executively produced by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg—has a
firm, skeletal grasp on the childhood traditions and superstitions that it presents. While the film is
geared toward older kids—tweeners, I hear they're calling 'em now—even adults may find this
Halloween yarn to be a fond trip down memory lane.
We're gonna need a bigger bulldozer.
D.J. Walters (Mitchel Musso) is a somewhat nebbish preteen who spends an inordinate amount of
time perched behind his telescope, spying on old man Nebbercracker (Steve Buscimi), a feisty old
coot who lives in the shuttered and disheveled house across the street. Nebbercracker is a
neighborhood legend—he killed and ate his wife according to local kids—and D.J. keeps tabs on
him with undue vigilance. When Mr. and Mrs. Walters go to a dentistry convention, leaving D.J. in
the care of babysitter "Zee" (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her musician boyfriend "Bones" (Jason Lee),
strange events begin to unfold across the street. Nebbercracker keels over—apparently dead—
when D.J. and his best friend "Chowder" (Sam Lerner) trespass on the property, and suddenly
the old man's house takes on a life of its own, snatching up a dog who tries to take a dump on
the lawn, devouring the slightly drunk punk rocker Bones, and dispatching with two bumbling
cops (Kevin James and Nick Cannon) who turn up to investigate. With all authority figures
absent, D.J. and Chowder are forced to figure out the mystery on their own, with help from prep-
school sweetheart Jenny Bennet (Spencer Locke) and some sage advice by way of soothsaying
pizza delivery man "Skull" (Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder), who tells them that the house is a
"domus mactibilis"—a deadly home.
There are few films that really capture the atmosphere of Halloween—that lonesome blend of
chilly autumn air, supernatural indulgence, and the magnificent melancholy of being young and
imaginative. E.T. is the best, for my money, Donnie Darko is up there too, and I
feel safe adding Monster House somewhere on the lower registers of the list. It's not an
instant classic or anything, but the film does capture the awkward pangs of adolescence and place
them in a Halloween context that's both nostalgic for us old geezers and new for those presently
pubing, their voices cracking and their upper lips sprouting with fuzz.
What I really like about Monster House is that it's never condescending toward kids. So
many PG films gloss over the adult realities of life, presenting some sort of absurd, idealized world,
but the best kid-flicks are the ones grounded in a mature reality, even if the subject matter is
fantastical or supernatural. Both E.T. and The Goonies, for example, wrestle with
some complex and weighty issues, and Monster House is the same. Though Bones and
the police officers are shown to be alive during the closing credits, we believe throughout the film
that they could very well be dead and gone. There are consequences in this world and the film
isn't afraid to be more than a little scary. I probably wouldn't show Monster House to
children under eight or nine—there are some frightening images, including a dead woman buried
under concrete—but older kids will get a kick out of the spooks. Adults will also be entertained, as
there are plenty of moments that will fly right over most kids' heads, like Bones trying to get
fresh with Zee or Chowder saying "my dad is at the pharmacy and my mom is at the movies with
her personal trainer." My favorite line is when Jenny says that the chandelier is the house's
uvula, and Chowder replies, "Oh, so it's a girl house."
Monster House uses the same performance capture technology that was used in The
Polar Express, and the result is a CG film that's highly lifelike when it comes to the
interactions between characters, their environments, and one another. While Pixar is justifiably
proud of their 100% hand-animated features, motion capture gives an entirely different feeling
altogether. The actors are not simply providing voices, but full performances—you can tell
Nebbercracker is Steve Buscimi just by the way he moves. It helps that every part in
Monster House is cast perfectly. The three kids are likeable and lovably awkward—
Chowder reminds me of a young Jonah Hill—and all of the surrounding actors invest their
somewhat stereotyped roles with life and personality. While the film does have its flaws—there
are really no "rules" for how the house chooses to act and react—Monster House is a fun
Halloween flick that will appeal to both fright-friendly kids and adults who still long to put on
superhero masks and carry pillowcases door to door.
While not as inherently jaw-dropping as some Pixar productions, Sony Imageworks has given
Monster House a 1080p/MPEG-2 transfer that brings director Gil Kenan's vision to life
with strong colors and a potent sense of depth. The motion capture performances here work well
with a CGI aesthetic that is decidedly stylized and non-photorealistic, giving the film a slightly
three dimensional, stop-motion quality. Unlike The Polar Express, which also used
performance capture technology, Monster House sidesteps the creepiness of the uncanny
valley by giving its characters exaggerated and somewhat asymmetrical features.
The image itself isn't quite up to par with the best CGI films—few moments really wowed me—
but the transfer doesn't exhibit any of the issues, like banding or macroblocking, that sometimes
plague lesser releases. Black levels are appropriately strong throughout, and the film presents a
bold autumnal palette that's pleasingly interrupted by the ghastly neon greens and blues inside
the titular monster house. If I have one overriding complaint, it's that the image isn't quite as
sharp as it could be. While this is indeed a digital-to-digital transfer, the filmmakers decided to add
a thin layer of artificial grain in post-production. Whether this was to keep the film from appearing
too clinical, or just to add a cinematic flair, I'm not sure, but the grain is occasionally noticeable
and has a tendency to soften the overall look.
Monster House creaks and groans on Blu-ray with an uncompressed PCM 5.1 track that
flat-out trumps the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that's also included. When I first started the film, I hastily
assumed the PCM track would be the default—never assume—and I wondered why the mix
sounded conspicuously flat, with voices that were potted way too low. I quickly realized my mistake
and switched to the PCM track, revealing an increased dynamic range and vocal work that's much
better balanced. From the start, the film has a lively mix that deftly combines ambience, effects,
voices, and score. Listen to fallen leaves as they skitter across suburban sidewalks, to fire crackling
ominously in the rear channels, and to the deep LFE quaking of the house as it shifts on its
foundation. Channel movements are subtle and effective, especially when the kids are trapped
inside the basement of the house. With many animated films, it sounds obvious that the voice
actors were stuck inside a studio booth, but Monster House's performance capture tech
allowed the filmmakers to record movement and voice simultaneously, and the added physicality
really comes across in the film's stellar voice work. Finally, Douglas Pipes' fantastic score is a
throwback to big Hollywood orchestration, immersing the film in deep horns and frantic, slithering
strings.
This series of seven behind-the-scenes featurettes is entertaining and complete, covering nearly
every aspect of the film's production. Imaginary Heroes explores some of the early
conceptual artwork of the film, Beginner's Luck shows how fortunate first-time director
Gil Kenan was to nab all of his wish-list actors, and The Best of Friends shows the off-
stage camaraderie that developed between the three young stars. Lots of Dots and
Black Box Theater are where things really start to get interesting though, as both
segments examine the film's extensive use of motion capture technology. It's pretty funny to see
the actors in their wetsuit-like getups, covered with tracking balls—they look like they either just
walked off the set of Tron or they just finished playing a game of laser tag. And last but
not least, Making it Real and Did You Hear That? provide inside looks at the
animation process and the intensive research that went into the sound design. Featuring
interviews with just about everyone involved with the film—with the notable exception of Steven
Spielberg—this is one behind-the-scenes special that's definitely worth watching.
Evolution of a Scene: Eliza vs. Nebbercracker (SD, 20:00)
Director Gil Kenan explains the four-step process of the film's creation, from the extensive,
animated storyboards to the motion capture, virtual camera layouts, and final animated
compositions. Afterward, we get to see the film's opening scene through the raw footage from
each step.
The Art of Monster House (1080p)
Divided into three categories—Conceptual Art, People, and Places and Things—this gallery
contains approximately 170 images, from the earliest sketches to pre-visualization paintings and
photographs of clay models.
Commentary by the Filmmakers
And who are "the filmmakers?" Well, this track never really tells you. Unless you've researched
the film on IMDB or have watched the seven-part "making-of" documentary and can match faces
to voices, you won't have a clue who's talking. Rather than getting all the filmmakers together in
one screening room to discuss the film as a group, this track features snippets from individual
interviews that are cobbled together over the film in a hodgepodge of interesting, but disjointed
information. The speakers are never identified, and the constant hopping from one voice to
another gets tiresome after a while. While there's plenty of info here there's simply too much
cutting and pasting for it to be listenable. You'd be better off watching the exhaustive "Inside
Monster House" documentary.
When I was nine years old I would have loved a film like Monster House, which serves up a
great adventure peppered with a few largely innocuous scares. Younger children with a lower
tolerance for frightening imagery probably shouldn't watch, but if you've got an older kid who has
yet to join the personality-draining ranks of Miley and the Jonas Bros, Monster House is a
good bet for some quality, Friday-night family entertainment. Recommended.
