Movie / Monster House

This film had a lot going for it. Solid critical reviews, a decent concept that makes sense on all levels and resolves with everyone getting redeemed, a tight and clever script with witty dialog, state of the art animation that conveys the human actors' facial motions, and so on. So why was the theater virtually empty on Sunday afternoon of opening weekend?

Alas despite its technical and creative brilliance, the film is somewhat hard to watch. The soundtrack can be jarring. The horror themes (social and spook) create tension, but without really scaring the heck out of you, so to speak. It's a masterpiece of digital rendering, which for some reason never really becomes culturally or emotionally compelling. Also why release a Halloween movie in mid-July? To have the DVD out for Halloween?

PG animated kid adventure film. Mild sexual innuendo, but plenty of social tension, to say nothing of being terrorized by a majorly haunted house.