and character designs—exaggerating forms to create a more expressive and atmospheric world. Production & Origins Creative Roots
When Nebbercracker is carted off to the hospital following a heart attack, DJ believes the danger has passed. He is wrong. He soon discovers the horrifying truth: The house itself is alive. It has a tongue made of porch stairs, a furnace for a stomach, and a brick chimney that snaps like a jaw. With the help of his brainy best friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) and the über-competitive, candy-obsessed Jenny (Spencer Locke), DJ must figure out how to "kill" a house before Halloween night, when it goes on a rampage against the neighborhood’s trick-or-treaters.
For 12-year-old DJ Walters, that house is directly across the street. The residence belongs to Horace Nebbercracker (voiced with terrifying gusto by Steve Buscemi), a man who seems to exist solely to confiscate the toys of neighborhood children and scream about trespassing. When DJ’s friend Chowder loses his basketball on Nebbercracker’s lawn, a confrontation ensues that results in the old man seemingly suffering a heart attack. monster house film
It was one of the first films released in the REAL D Cinema digital 3D format. Production Details
Constance was a morbidly obese circus "giantess" who was tormented and abused by crowds. When a group of teenagers caused her to fall from a building in a cruel prank, she died. A heartbroken Mr. Nebbercracker, who was the construction foreman, built the house around her still-conscious, rage-filled body, encasing her in concrete in the basement. He then spent decades guarding the house, feeding it inanimate objects to keep its hunger at bay, but unable to destroy it out of love and guilt. and character designs—exaggerating forms to create a more
DJ (Mitchel Musso), his goofy best friend Chowder (Sam Lerner), and the clever Jenny (Spencer Locke) team up to destroy the house before it can harm trick-or-treaters.
The design of the house itself is the film’s magnum opus. The animators face the difficult task of anthropomorphizing a building without making it look cartoonish. They succeeded brilliantly. The front door becomes a jagged, gaping mouth; the carpet rolls out like a tongue; the windows serve as glowing, predatory eyes. The wood creaks and groans like breathing. It transforms from a static location to a character in its own right, a lumbering beast that is both ridiculous and genuinely threatening. He soon discovers the horrifying truth: The house
In the pantheon of animated cinema, the 2000s were largely dominated by the squeaky-clean, CG sparkle of Pixar and the irreverent, pop-culture-laden comedy of DreamWorks. Yet, buried beneath the hype of talking cars and ogres named Shrek, Columbia Pictures released a film that felt strikingly different. It was a film that didn’t want to sell toys or spawn a musical; it wanted to scare you.