Monster House is a 2006 American animated supernatural horror comedy film[3] directed by Gil Kenan, in his directorial debut, with a screenplay by Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab and Pamela Pettler, from a story by Harmon and Schrab. The story, set during Halloween, follows a group of kids who discover and attempt to stop a sentient haunted house that consumes anything that comes near it. The film features the voices of Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Nick Cannon, Jason Lee, Fred Willard, Jon Heder, Catherine O'Hara, and Kathleen Turner, with Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, and Spencer Locke as the main protagonists.
On October 30, one day before Halloween, 12-year-old Dustin James "D.J." Walters witnesses elderly Horace Nebbercracker stealing a little girl's tricycle and scaring her away from his house. DJ has documented many similar incidents at the Nebbercracker house, which is across the street from his own. The same day, DJ's parents leave for a convention, placing him in the care of a teenage babysitter named Elizabeth (Zee). Later, DJ's friend Chowder comes over to DJs house with his new basketball, shows off his basketball tricks, and loses his basketball in Nebbercracker's lawn; the boys try to retrieve it, but Nebbercracker stops them, and he suffers a heart attack. He is taken away by an ambulance and taken to the hospital, and so, everyone assumes he is dead.
Zee's inebriated boyfriend Bones arrives. He reveals that, many years ago, Nebbercracker stole his kite. Bones also relates rumors that Nebbercracker ate his wife. After Zee throws him out, Bones notices his kite on Nebbercracker's porch, tries to retrieve it, and is devoured by the house. DJ and Chowder are attacked by the house when they investigate; the next day is Halloween. They save young Jenny Bennett, who is selling Halloween candy, from being eaten by the house. Jenny calls police officers Landers and Lister, but the house stays quiet when the officers arrive, and they dismiss the report.
The trio consults supernatural expert Reginald "Skull" Skulinski, who speculates the house must be a rare monster created by the merging of a human ghost and a man-made object, only unbound when its heart is destroyed. Concluding Nebbercracker has died and possessed the house, the children construct a dummy child, filling it with cough syrup they stole from Chowder's parents' pharmacy. They offer the dummy to the house to eat, hoping to put the house to sleep so they can find its "heart". Landers and Lister arrive and discover the stolen medicine; as they try to arrest the children, the house eats them, the children, and the squad car. Separated from the officers, who seem to have vanished, the children explore the sleeping house's basement. They find all the stolen toys, and a shrine to Nebbercracker's wife, Constance the Giantess, whose skeleton is encased in cement. The house awakens and attacks them, but they trigger its gag reflex by grabbing its uvula equivalent (the chandelier), forcing it to vomit them outside.
After that, Chowder angrily argues with DJ for putting him in this situation with the cops and the house. DJ angrily storms off home, but is almost run over by Nebbercracker (who survived the heart attack and drove the ambulance home).
When the house reacts to Nebbercracker's return, it is revealed that Constance is the ghost possessing the house. When DJ asks if he allegedly ate Constance, Nebbercracker then decides to tell the story: When he fell in love with her, she was an unwilling participant in a circus freak show due to her obesity, living in a cage and tormented by people throwing things at her. He helped her escape and married her. On Halloween, during the house's construction, some children threw eggs at Constance; tormented and enraged, she grabbed an axe. Nebbercracker tried to stop her, only to be knocked out as she stumbled and fell into the unfinished basement to her death, her body accidentally being coated in cement. Nebbercracker finished the house in Constance's memory, but her vengeful ghost merged with it, and she became the Monster House. Realizing he needed to take precautions, Nebbercracker then assumed a hostile demeanor to protect innocent people from her especially on Halloween.
Realizing the danger Nebbercracker may be putting himself in, DJ convinces him that it is time to let Constance go. Overhearing this, Constance becomes enraged, using two trees to lift herself from her foundation and chase the children and Nebbercracker off. Nebbercracker tries to comfort Constance, and explains everything is for the best, but when she sees he intends to blow her up with dynamite, she attacks him. Realizing the trio are the only way the house can be destroyed, Nebbercracker gives DJ the dynamite. Chowder uses an excavator to attack Constance and lure her into a pit in a construction site; she falls, but changes shape instead of dying. Jenny lights the dynamite, and DJ swings out on a crane's hook with it, dropping it into the chimney and destroying the house. Finally freed, Constance's ghost briefly reunites with Nebbercracker before ascending to the afterlife. As Nebbercracker starts to cry for his wife, DJ apologizes for his losses but Nebbercracker thanks the trio for freeing him and Constance from being trapped with their suffering for 45 years.
That night, the trio and Nebbercracker gather at the house's still-intact basement, returning all the confiscated items to the Trick or Treaters (including the girl's tricycle and Chowder's basketball). After everyone leaves with their stuff retrieved from Nebbercracker's house, Bones emerges from the basement, unharmed, carrying his kite. During the credits, Bones discovers Zee is now dating Skull. Meanwhile, Landers, Lister and a dog that were devoured by the house earlier escape alive.
The original screenplay of Monster House was, in Kenan's words, "absolutely brilliant and laugh-out-loud funny". Due to his experience as a storyteller, Kenan decided to preserve all the characters and the tone from Harmon's and Schrab's story, but added the idea that the titular house was possessed by a soul, leading to the creation of Constance Nebbercracker and the house's backstory. To help him revise the script and introduce Constance and Horace Nebbercracker into the plot, Kenan brought Pamela Pettler after reading her script for Corpse Bride (2005). They worked on the script at her house, and to meet the established deadline, they finished a draft quickly and sent it to Amy Pascal at Sony's Columbia Pictures. As work on the screenplay was underway, in a few months of preparation, Kenan had assembled a team of storyboard artists led by Simeon Wilkins in Studio City, Los Angeles to put up rudimentary boards with scratch dialogue and temporal score, with Khang Lee and Chris Appelhans collaborating on paintings for the film.[6]
The film was shot using performance capture, in which the actors performed the characters' movement and lines while linked to sensors, a process pioneered by Zemeckis for his film The Polar Express (2004).[7] Zemeckis was in the process of starting filming on The Polar Express when he met Kenan, who visited the set to see how that film was filmed and discussed with Kenan how they would exactly shoot Monster House, deciding that they should prioritize the story before the filming technology, though Kenan always felt that the story should use animation to create a world with a living house, as he opined that making the house a viable threat and character would better work in an animated setting.[6]
Ed Verreaux served as the production designer of Monster House. To design the neighbourhood where the story takes place, Verreaux realized that the film's setting needed to resemble that of 1980s films, like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). During his discussions with Harmon and Schrab, Kenan was told that the film's setting was inspired by that of Wisconsin and Minneapolis. Verreaux and Kenan went together on a scouting trip to design the film's locations, which involved a visit to Universal Studios' backlot, during which they were granted access to the suburban street of The 'Burbs (1989), the neighborhood of the show Desperate Housewives and the house of Psycho (1960).[6]
Review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 75% approval rating, based on 162 reviews with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Monster House welcomes kids and adults alike into a household full of smart, monstrous fun."[12] On Metacritic the film has a score of 68 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[13] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[14]
However, the film was not without its detractors. Frank Lovece of Film Journal International praised director Gil Kenan as "a talent to watch" but berated the "internal logic [that] keeps changing.... D.J.'s parents are away, and the house doesn't turn monstrous in front of his teenage babysitter, Zee. But it does turn monstrous in front of her boyfriend, Bones. It doesn't turn monstrous in front of the town's two cops until, in another scene, it does."[23] In a dismissive review, Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote: "Alert 'Harry Potter' fans will notice the script shamelessly lifts the prime personality traits of J. K. Rowling's three most important young characters for its lead trio: Tall, dark-haired, serious-minded DJ is Harry, semi-dufus Chowder is Ron and their new cohort, smarty-pants prep school redhead Jenny (Spencer Locke), is Hermione.... it is a theme-park ride, with shocks and jolts provided with reliable regularity. Across 90 minutes, however, the experience is desensitizing and dispiriting and far too insistent."[24]
Waxwork Records is thrilled to release MONSTER HOUSE Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Douglas Pipes. This special double LP marks Waxwork's third soundtrack album release with composer Douglas Pipes following 2014's Trick 'r Treat and 2016's Krampus. Monster House is a 2006 animated Horror film directed by Gil Kenan (Scream, Ghostbusters: Afterlife). The plot tells the story of a neighborhood that is terrorized by a haunted house during Halloween. The movie features the voices of Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, The Secretary), Mitchell Musso (Hannah Montana), Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Kevin James (The King of Queens), Nick Cannon, Jason Lee, Fred Willard (Spinal Tap), Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite), Catherine O-Hara (Beetlejuice), and Kathleen Turner (Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit).