The House with a Clock in Its Walls
Universal Pictures | Release Date: September 21, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
57
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
16
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
89
Austin ChronicleMatthew MonagleSep 19, 2018
So it comes as no small shock that The House With a Clock in Its Walls may very well be one of the best spooky movies to ever operate under a PG rating. The man known for taking things too far also appears to know exactly where to stop. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Brad WheelerSep 20, 2018
A fantastical adventure, dandy ode to weirdos, and accessible anti-war allegory for all ages, especially 10-year-old boys. Read full review
80
Film ThreatAnthony Ray BenchSep 27, 2018
This is absolutely Eli Roth’s best film. It’s scary, poignant, thrilling, and just a ton of fun. Read full review
80
SlateMatthew DessemSep 20, 2018
Roth and screenwriter Eric Kripke’s adaptation of The House With a Clock in its Walls is a bullseye, perfectly balanced between funny and scary. Read full review
79
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiSep 18, 2018
The House With a Clock in Its Walls is easily Eli Roth’s best motion picture, and that’s not an attempt to damn the film with faint praise. It’s a spooky and amusing piece of family-friendly Halloween cinema, sharply produced and mostly effective, told with skill and panache. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceySep 20, 2018
Roth, in restricting himself to the polite requirements of a kid-friendly movie, keeps his darker instincts in check, making this more a movie about set design than emotions. Read full review
75
Film Journal InternationalStephen Whitty Sep 19, 2018
A few minutes into The House with a Clock in Its Walls, you realize Eli Roth knows what he’s doing—and that means carefully mixing the scares and stillness for a horror comedy that’s made-to-order for certain monster-loving 10-year-olds. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeSep 19, 2018
The fantasy and horror sections of The House With A Clock In Its Walls, including a scene where our core trio must fight reanimated jack-o’-lanterns, are full of wonder. Some of them — and this is a sentence we never thought we’d write about an Eli Roth movie — downright sparkle. Read full review
70
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpSep 26, 2018
As delightful as relentless CGI monster mayhem is—and there’s plenty to go round as The House with a Clock in Its Walls rolls through its final act—it’s the lovely character work that makes the story memorable. Roth and his cast pack a surplus of exuberance into a children’s fantasy mold that’s by now grown musty. Read full review
70
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergSep 20, 2018
The movie has the pleasingly demented texture of early Tim Burton. It bears the logo of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin company and is seen from a Spielbergian child’s-eye view. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyAlan ScherstuhlSep 19, 2018
Since the movie is in such a hurry, we’re not given much chance to soak in this strangeness. Making up for it: Black is paired with Blanchett, who plays a neighboring witch in smashing violet skirt ensembles; the two rat-a-tat insults at each other like a vaudevillian comedy duo. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterHarry WindsorSep 18, 2018
As a family film in that vein it largely succeeds, buoyed by Black’s typical exuberance, Blanchett’s typical slyness and a richly evocative rendering of a Rockwellian suburb sprinkled with goofer dust. Less interesting, as is the way with many audience-avatar YA protagonists (sorry, Harry), is the main character, and Vaccaro’s rather hyper-articulated performance doesn’t help. Read full review
68
IGNWitney SeiboldSep 19, 2018
An exciting and scary final act makes up for a middling kid horror fantasy that is marked by a slow start and an inappropriately comedic tone. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatySep 18, 2018
Black, no surprise, steals the show, manically hamming it up like Harry Houdini on laughing gas, while Roth tries to keep the breakneck pace of his phantasmagoria going. As someone who was growing bored with Roth’s gory shockfests, I say: “Welcome to the kiddie table, Eli.” Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsSep 20, 2018
Basically watchable. Read full review
63
Washington PostJane HorwitzSep 19, 2018
“House” sometimes loses track of convoluted plot points and skimps on exteriors. But it does a fine job of capturing the childlike wonderment that suffused those earlier films. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 19, 2018
Unlike the Harry Potter movies, The House with a Clock in Its Walls fails to find the sweet spot for cross-generational appeal. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTom RussoSep 19, 2018
Tricky territory to navigate, but it ultimately lends some genuine poignancy to the story’s familiar accidental-family themes. If there’s someplace Roth makes a mark, it’s here. Read full review
60
Rolling StonePeter TraversSep 20, 2018
The something extra comes with watching Black and Blanchett match wits, especially the former; he radiates his signature comic moxie with glimmers of the dramatic chops he demonstrated in movies like "Bernie" (2011) and this year’s "Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot." Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 19, 2018
At his best, Roth plunders elements from countless other tales of supernatural spookery — ominous spell books, shuddering tombstones, grown men and little kids shooting lightning bolts from their fingertips — and nudges them eerily close to genuine enchantment. Read full review
60
EmpireDan JolinSep 18, 2018
For all the gags flying around, and all the friendly insults batted between Blanchett and Black, the script lacks the sparkle and polish of many of the classic Amblins it so enthusiastically emulates. Read full review
60
Screen DailyNikki BaughanSep 18, 2018
Despite a fantastical premise and some truly eye-popping effects, The House With A Clock In Its Walls suffers from post-Potter fatigue; there’s simply nothing here, visual or thematic, that hasn’t been done before. Read full review
60
Total FilmJosh WinningSep 18, 2018
An engaging new direction for Eli Roth, who offsets the odd tonal hiccup with plenty of ghoulish delights. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 18, 2018
While not terribly original, it would be fair to call the movie inventive, like one of those eccentrics who’s constantly pestering the patent office with what he thinks are fresh ideas, only to discover that someone else got there first. Read full review
50
The PlaylistWill AshtonSep 25, 2018
The House With A Clock On Its Walls has its fair share of charms, but it doesn’t leave you spellbound. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaSep 24, 2018
The cast in House is exceedingly fancy, but they never seem to connect; Blanchett and Black are about as awkward a pairing as they sound on paper, engaged in two irreconcilable ways of going about their performances. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenSep 20, 2018
You get a sense [Eli Roth]'s struggling to rein in his penchant for gory frights, and for that reason “Clock” feels like a movie at war with itself. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshSep 20, 2018
Despite all the rich elements — the fantastic cast, the wonderfully detailed production and costume design, an oddball family story of black sheep finding each other — there's something missing from The House with a Clock in Its Walls. It's weightless, hop-skipping over necessary story-building, glossing over Lewis' warlock training as well as the personal histories of his guardians. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubSep 19, 2018
By the end, the 105-minute movie feels another third as long. You’ll probably respect the effort. But you’ll be more than happy to leave The House With a Clock in Its Walls. Read full review
50
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneySep 18, 2018
I’ve never enjoyed any of Roth’s grisly R-rated movies, but at least those had a distinct vision and style. If only his kid-friendly haunted house movie was as original, it could’ve been a surprising treat. Read full review
50
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 18, 2018
The House with a Clock in Its Walls is at its best when it foregrounds the adults and gives Black and Blanchett ample time to bicker with one another. Read full review
42
The VergeTasha RobinsonSep 23, 2018
The book is a charmingly quaint, deeply eerie supernatural mystery about grief, necromancy, and the apocalypse. The movie version is a shrieking CGI carnival full of poop jokes and barfing pumpkins. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 20, 2018
Too hectic to be scary, and with a plot that’s regularly bogged down in optimistic franchise-building spadework, The House with a Clock in Its Walls never quite grasps what made its inspirations tick. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 19, 2018
It is reasonably inoffensive, a bit like the recent Goosebumps, in which Black played a comparably defanged role, but it looks as if it was produced by some computer programme, devised by accountants and market researchers. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 18, 2018
It’s deathly slow, deadly-dull and makes one long for the days when it looked like [Roth] was shifting, full-time, into producing. Read full review
25
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenSep 24, 2018
I’m all for scaring kids at the movies, and even allowing dark magic to be a part of that. (I’m a fan of The Witches, after all.) But the indiscriminate application of intense horror tropes here feels both clumsy and inconsiderate. Kids deserve both more, and less. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineJake ColeSep 19, 2018
The final act of The House with a Clock in Its Walls stumbles between awkward, telegraphed jolts and busy, effects-heavy action, completely losing sight of the trauma and grief that was meant to give the film its emotional core. Read full review
0
The Associated PressMark KennedySep 18, 2018
The film somehow manages its own witchcraft in finding the perfect un-sweet spot — it’s too scary for little kids, not scary enough for older ones, not funny or clever enough for their parents, and too redundant for everyone. Poof! Watch the audience disappear. Read full review
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