Horror movies for kids have definitely grown to become a niche genre on today's box office, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood from trying. The House with a Clock in its Walls came out last weekend and, surprisingly enough, the film performed better than expected.
According to Bloody-Disgusting, Eli Roth's first family friendly film has raked in $26.8 million at the box office. That's better than Jack Black's other kid-horror flick Goosebumps, which opened with $23.6 million back in 2015.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the movie is out of the dark yet. House with a Clock eventually took $42 million to make, but at least the profits are already past the halfway point. I guess they should just celebrate the fact that the movie made more than Goosebumps. Heck, this movie is the highest grossing opening for Roth for his entire directing career.
Personally, I thought the film was alright. It's being marketed as a film that will introduce kids to the horror genre, and I think that it does that job pretty well. It's scary without being absolutely frightening, and I think there's a lot of humor in there to keep a lot of the kids interested. Though I think the lead kid Owen Cavvaro was alright, I think Jack Black and Cate Blanchett did the best with what they were given.
Lewis Barnavelt, after losing his parents, is sent to Michigan to live with his uncle Jonathan. He discovers his uncle is a warlock and enters a world of magic and sorcery. But this power is not limited to good people: Lewis learns of Isaac Izard, an evil wizard who wanted to cause the Apocalypse so that he could see what happened afterwards. To do this, he constructed a magical clock with black magic, as long as it exists it will keep ticking, counting down to doomsday. He died before he could finish the clock, but he hid the clock in his house, where Uncle Jonathan now lives. Now Lewis and Jonathan must find the clock before it's too late, and before Isaac's wife, Selena, gets to it.
The House with a Clock in its Walls is now out in theaters.
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