In 1955, after his parents are killed in a car crash, ten-year-old Lewis Barnavelt moves to live with his Uncle Jonathan to New Zebedee, Michigan. All he has left of his parents is a Magic 8-Ball they had given him, and a family photograph. He meets Jonathan’s neighbor and best friend, Florence Zimmerman. During the night, Lewis is puzzled when he hears a ticking sound in the walls. Lewis begins exploring the house and stumbles upon Jonathan smashing a wall with an ax. Frightened, he runs away and stumbles upon multiple household objects coming to life. Jonathan confesses that he is a warlock and Florence is a witch. The house’s previous owners were a sinister warlock named Isaac Izard, an orphaned former friend and fellow warlock of Jonathan and who fought at WWII, and his equally wicked wife Selena, who had hidden a clock within the walls of the house before they died. Jonathan has been trying to find it and discover its purpose. Despite Jonathan’s cautions, Lewis begins teaching himself magic. On his first day at his new school, Lewis meets Tarby Corrigan, who befriends him during Tarby’s campaign for class president. When Tarby wins the election, he abandons Lewis. Lewis’ mother visits him in dreams. When he laments that Tarby does not see him as a friend, she suggests that he use a spell from a forbidden book to impress Tarby. On Halloween night, Lewis performs a necromancy spell in a cemetery, accidentally summoning the ghost of Isaac who reinhabits his dead body. Lewis spots Isaac in the house of a neighbor, Mrs. Hanchett. He brings her to the house, but before he can find Jonathan, Isaac emerges. He reveals that Mrs. Hanchett is really Selena, who killed Mrs. Hanchett, using her bones to make the clock’s key, and took her place. It was also she who took the form of Lewis’ mother to persuade him to summon Isaac. Isaac explains that his hidden clock’s blueprints was Azazel’s, who had given them to him, as an answer after he used every spell in the Black Forest to undo the horrors of humanity he had witnessed at the time of the war and will use the clock to turn time back so that humanity never existed. Jonathan, Florence, and Lewis are chased from the house. Using the Magic 8-Ball to learn the location of the clock under the boiler room, the three return. Florence defeats a snake guarding the room while the others pursue Isaac. The clock transforms Jonathan into a baby, except for his face which he'd shielded with cards. Lewis consults the Magic 8-Ball, which says "Say goodbye". He realizes he has to let go of the pain of losing his parents to harness his true power. He breaks the clock by dropping the ball, which blocks the clock's gears. Then Lewis blasts Isaac and Selena with magic he channels from the clock. They fall, de-age, and are ultimately erased from existence. Lewis returns to school with more confidence and gets revenge on Tarby and his friends by magically bouncing a basketball on their faces, and also befriends a girl named Rose Rita Pottinger. At the end of the day, Jonathan and Florence are shown picking up Lewis, the three of them now like a regular family.
Cast
Jack Black as Jonathan Barnavelt, Lewis’s uncle and a warlock
Cate Blanchett as Florence Zimmerman, Jonathan’s neighbor, and friend, and a witch
Owen Vaccaro as Lewis Barnavelt, Jonathan’s 10 year-old orphaned nephew
Kyle MacLachlan as Isaac Izard, an evil warlock
Renée Elise Goldsberry as Selena Izard, Isaac’s wife and an evil witch
Sunny Suljic as Tarby Corrigan, Lewis’ classmate
Colleen Camp as Mrs. Hanchett, Jonathan’s nosey neighbor
Lorenza Izzo as Mother, Lewis’ mother and Jonathan's sister. Lorenza was married to the director during filming.
Vanessa Anne Williams as Rose Rita Pottinger, one of Lewis’ classmates.
The credits said the Chair had the job of Griffin Tamer, and the Griffin had the job of Chair's Hair & Makeup.
Production
on the film began on 10 October 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the challenges for the visual effects team was building massive 10 foot and 14.5 foot gears for the Clock Room sequence. Another challenge was designing the Jack-o’-lantern characters, which included input from Steven Spielberg on the final designs. Noah Schnapp auditioned for Lewis’ role, but ended up losing to Owen Vaccaro. Cate Blanchett's character was absent from the final confrontation because of scheduling conflicts.
Release
The House with a Clock in Its Walls was released by Universal Pictures on September 21, 2018. Select IMAX screenings featured a 3D version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which only ran for the first week of release in North America.
The House with a Clock in its Walls has grossed $68.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $62.9 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $131.5 million, against a production budget of $42 million. In the United States and Canada, The House with a Clock in its Walls was released alongside Assassination Nation, Life Itself and Fahrenheit 11/9, and was projected to gross $15–20 million from 3,592 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $7.8 million on its first day, including $840,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $26.9 million, finishing first at the box office and marking the best opening of Roth’s career, surpassing Hostel in 2006. In its second weekend the film made $12.5 million, finishing third behind newcomers Night School and Smallfoot.
Critical response
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 66% based on 209 reviews, with an average rating of 5.94/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "An entertaining PG detour for gore maestro Eli Roth, The House with a Clock in its Walls is a family-friendly blend of humor and horror with an infectious sense of fun." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of ‘B+’ on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Accolades
Future
The film was based on the 1973 novel of the same name by John Bellairs, which was the first in a series of 12 books. The director Eli Roth has mentioned that they could make a sequel film.
