Monster House

In every small town there is a creepy old house occupied by a creepy old man in a soiled, dingy wifebeater who will shout out from his porch for the damned kids to get off of his overgrown lawn. In Monster House, that creepy old man is Mr. Nebbercracker, who ups the petty ante by confiscating the trikes and errant balls that come within his gnarled reach. When neighborhood boy DJ inadvertently causes Nebbercracker’s eyes to bug out and heels to pop up in the air, the boy and his best friend Chowder are dismayed to find that the house itself seems to have become malevolently sentient. With the help of their new object de prepubescent infatuation, the ghostbusters seek to take down the titular beastie before it wrecks property values and eats all the Halloween candy … along with the local trick-or-treaters. Using the motion-capture animation technique that made The Polar Express a little too creepy for a good Christmas story, producers Steven Speilberg and Robert Zemekis utilize the technology to fashion a retro-Halloween world to more than satisfying effect. May be too intense for toddler-range kids.