The House with a Clock in Its Walls Dvd

The House with a Clock in Its Walls is a 2018 American dark fantasy comedy film directed by Eli Roth, starring Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Owen Vaccaro, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Sunny Suljic, and Kyle MacLachlan. It was based on the 1973 novel of the same name by John Bellairs, which was the first in a series of 12 books. The film follows a young boy, Lewis, who is sent to live with his uncle, Jonathan, in a creaky old house. He soon learns it was previously inhabited by an evil Warlock.

Universal Pictures released the film in the United States on September 21, 2018. It was a box office success, grossing over $131 million worldwide, and received lukewarm reviews from critics, who largely praised the cast but said the film did not fully live up to its potential. It is Eli Roth’s first film to not receive an R-rating.

Plot

In 1955, after his parents are killed in a car crash, ten-year-old Lewis Barnavelt moves to live with his Uncle Jonathan to New Zebedee, Michigan. All he has left of his parents is a Magic 8-Ball they had given him, and a family photograph. He meets Jonathan’s neighbor and best friend, Florence Zimmerman.

During the night, Lewis is puzzled when he hears a ticking sound in the walls. Lewis begins exploring the house and stumbles upon Jonathan smashing a wall with an ax. Frightened, he runs away and stumbles upon multiple household objects coming to life. Jonathan confesses that he is a warlock and Florence is a witch. The house’s previous owners were a sinister warlock named Isaac Izard, an orphaned former friend and fellow warlock of Jonathan and who fought at WWII (which it had left him traumatized by it), and his equally wicked wife Selena, who had hidden a clock within the walls of the house before they died. Jonathan has been trying to find it and discover its purpose. Despite Jonathan’s cautions, Lewis begins teaching himself magic.

On his first day at his new school, Lewis meets Tarby Corrigan, who befriends him during Tarby’s campaign for class president. When Tarby wins the election, he abandons Lewis.

Lewis’ mother visits him in dreams. When he laments that Tarby does not see him as a friend, she suggests that he use a spell from a forbidden book to impress Tarby. On Halloween night, Lewis performs a necromancy spell in a cemetery, accidentally summoning the ghost of Isaac who reinhabits his dead body.

Lewis spots Isaac in the house of a neighbor, Mrs. Hanchett. He brings her to the house, but before he can find Jonathan, Isaac emerges. He reveals that Mrs. Hanchett is really Selena, who killed Mrs. Hanchett, using her bones to make the clock’s key, and took her place. It was also she who took the form of Lewis’ mother to persuade him to summon Isaac. Isaac explains that his hidden clock’s blueprints was Azazel’s, who had given them to him, as an answer after he used every spell in the Black Forest to undo the horrors of humanity he had witnessed at the time of the war and will use the clock to turn time back so that humanity never existed. Jonathan, Florence, and Lewis are chased from the house.

Using the Magic 8-Ball to learn the location of the clock under the boiler room, the three return. Florence defeats a snake guarding the room while the others pursue Isaac. The clock transforms Jonathan into a baby, except for his face which he’d shielded with cards. Lewis consults the Magic 8-Ball, which says “Say goodbye”. He realizes he has to let go of the pain of losing his parents to harness his true power. He breaks the clock by dropping the ball, which blocks the clock’s gears. Then Lewis blasts Isaac and Selena with magic he channels from the clock. They fall, de-age, and are ultimately erased from existence.

Lewis returns to school with more confidence and gets revenge on Tarby and his friends by magically bouncing a basketball on their faces, and also befriends a friendly girl named Rose Rita Pottinger. At the end of the day, Jonathan and Florence are shown picking up Lewis, the three of them now like a regular family.

Cast

Jack Black as Jonathan Barnavelt, Lewis’s uncle and a warlock
Cate Blanchett as Florence Zimmerman, Jonathan’s neighbor, and friend, and a witch
Owen Vaccaro as Lewis Barnavelt, Jonathan’s 10 year-old orphaned nephew
Renée Elise Goldsberry as Selena Izard, Isaac’s wife and an evil witch
Sunny Suljic as Tarby Corrigan, Lewis’ classmate
Colleen Camp as Mrs. Hanchett, Jonathan’s nosey neighbor
Lorenza Izzo as Mrs. Barnavelt, Lewis’ mother and Jonathan’s younger sister.
Kyle MacLachlan as Isaac Izard, an evil warlock
Vanessa Anne Williams as Rose Rita Pottinger, one of Lewis’ classmates.
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