So imagine this: There’s a house, and it’s littered with clocks, but there’s also a clock in its walls and it’s the clock in the walls that everyone’s fussing about. Doesn’t make a ton of real world sense, but it makes plenty of movie world sense, and presto, there you have it, Eli Roth’s The House with a Clock in Its Walls, which is both a super fun kids flick and…a very good Eil Roth flick. I kind of feel like this might be his milieu. The guy clearly loves horror, but honestly, his horror movies don’t often metastasize into work that feels unique to his vision (with exceptions). They feel like echoing throwbacks.
I guess to an extent that’s true of The House with a Clock in its Walls, too, being as it reflects the good times of old school Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, but honestly, it’s so infused with Roth’s fondness for the genre that it kinda feels like only he could have made it.
You can read my full review over at Paste Magazine.
A Constant Visual Feast 