Monster House is a 2006 American computer-animated horror film directed by Gil Kenan in his directorial debut and written by Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab and Pamela Pettler, about a neighborhood being terrorized by a sentient haunted house during Halloween. The film features the voices of Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Nick Cannon, Jason Lee, Fred Willard, Jon Heder, Catherine O'Hara, and Kathleen Turner, as well as human characters being animated using live action motion capture stop motion animation, which was previously used in The Polar Express (2004). It was Sony's first computer animated film produced by Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Produced by Robert Zemeckis' ImageMovers, Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment (marking their first theatrically-released fully animated film since Balto) and Relativity Media (their first animated film), the film was released theatrically by Columbia Pictures on July 21, 2006. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $142 million worldwide against a $75 million budget. Monster House received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but lost to Happy Feet.
Plot[]
On October 30, 1983, 12-year-old DJ Walters witnesses elderly Horace Nebbercracker confiscating a little girl's tricycle and scaring her away from his house. DJ has documented many similar incidents at the Nebbercracker house, which is across the street from his own. The same day, DJ's parents leave for a convention, placing him in the care of teenage babysitter Zee. Later, DJ's friend Chowder loses a basketball in Nebbercracker's lawn; the boys try to retrieve it, but Nebbercracker stops them. He appears to suffer a heart attack and is taken away by an ambulance.
Zee's inebriated boyfriend Bones arrives. He reveals that, many years ago, Nebbercracker stole his kite. Bones also relates rumors that Nebbercracker ate his wife. After Zee throws him out, Bones notices his kite on Nebbercracker's porch, tries to retrieve it, and is devoured by the house. DJ and Chowder are attacked by the house when they investigate; the next day, they save young Jenny Bennett, who is selling Halloween candy, from being eaten by the house. Jenny calls police officers Landers and Lister, but the house stays quiet when the officers arrive, and they dismiss the report.
The trio consults supernatural expert Reginald "Skull" Skulinski, who speculates the house must be a rare monster created by the merging of a human ghost and a man-made object, only unbound when its heart is destroyed. Concluding Nebbercracker has died and possessed the house, the children construct a dummy child, filling it with cough syrup from Chowder's parents' pharmacy. They offer the dummy to the house to eat, hoping to put the house to sleep so they can find its heart. Landers and Lister arrive and discover the stolen medicine; as they try to arrest the children, the house eats them, the children, the dummy, and the squad car. Separated from the officers, who seem to have vanished, the children explore the sleeping house's basement. They find all the stolen toys, and a shrine to Nebbercracker's wife, Constance the Giantess, whose skeleton is encased in cement. The house awakens and attacks them, but they trigger its gag reflex by grabbing its uvula equivalent, forcing it to vomit them outside.
Nebbercracker returns from the hospital alive, and reveals that Constance is the ghost. When he fell in love with her, she was an unwilling participant in a circus freak show, living in a cage and tormented by people throwing things at her. He helped her escape and married her. On Halloween, during the house's construction, some children threw eggs at her. Frightened and enraged, she grabbed an axe. When Nebbercracker tried to stop her, she stumbled and fell into the unfinished basement to her death, her body accidentally being coated in cement. Nebbercracker finished the house in Constance's memory, but her vengeful ghost merged with it, and she became the Monster House. For the next 45 years, he assumed a hostile demeanor to protect innocent people from her.
DJ convinces Nebbercracker that he needs to let Constance go. Constance, overhearing, uses two trees to lift herself from her foundation and chase the children off. Nebbercracker tries to comfort Constance, and explains everything is for the best, but when she sees he intends to blow her up with dynamite, she attacks him. Chowder uses an excavator to attack Constance and lure her into a pit in a construction site; she falls, but is not destroyed. Jenny lights the dynamite, and DJ swings out on a crane's hook with it, rescuing Chowder while destroying the house with an accurate throw. Freed, Constance's ghost dances with her husband for a moment before ascending to the afterlife. Nebbercracker thanks the three children for freeing him and Constance from their suffering.
That night, the trio and Nebbercracker gather at the house's still-intact basement, returning all the confiscated items. After everyone leaves, Bones emerges from the basement, unharmed, carrying his kite. During the credits, Bones discovers Zee is dating Skull. Meanwhile, everyone else devoured by the house escapes alive.