By Eli Roth has been making some pretty juvenile projects his whole life. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Some are totally watchable (Cabin Fever, Hostel). Others are really bad, but compelling (Hemlock Grove). Most, though, are just bad. But the one thing that ties all his work together is the fact that they’re all soaked in copious streams of blood all mixed up with chunks of gore like Jeffrey Dahmer’s favorite gumbo. Teenage boys everywhere rejoice when he announces a new horror picture, but this time around he’s skewing a bit younger.
We have our first trailer for The House with a Clock in its Walls, and finally we get to see what it’s like for Eli Roth to film an entirely bloodless movie.
And it’s fine.
Roth always struck me as the kind of guy that, if it weren’t for all the viscera, he’d make an adept journeyman filmmaker. And that’s what we’re getting here. Everything looks good and Gothic and old fashioned in that sort of way that children’s spookathons often do. There are no shots or sequences that make me think only Eli Roth could have directed them, but everything looks nice. And for a movie like this, that’s more than enough.
The House with a Clock in its Walls stars Jack Black and Cate Blanchett. The plot follows a boy who has to live with his creepy uncle in an old house, which has a ticking heart. The boy does something to wake the dead, and shit gets real with witches and warlocks, and you know where the story’s going. Everyone hugs and learns a lesson two hours later.
The movie hits theaters September 21st.
