Spooky House

Its a B movie with a weak story trying to mix between Home Alone and the haunted mansion with a very silly story.

OK, my wife rented this off-the-shelf, thinking it would be a cute "family" movie, so we were forced to buy pizza and sit through it with our kids (9 & 5). In a nutshell, the kids loved it, although my 5 year old thought parts of it were a bit "scary", and didn't want to sit through it. For my wife and I, however, it was definitely a tremendous groaner...The biggest plus was the fact that it was SOOOO bad that we actually laughed at how bad it was! This was one of those "I'm too drunk to go to sleep...what's on TV?" B-movies from the old USA Network "Up All Night" series (if you remember those).

There were parts of it that actually reminded us of the old "Little Rascals" shows, where the kids---and their so-obviously-memorized scripts---were almost like puppets. The super-fast-motion scenes to speed things up were good for a chuckle.

Rent this for your kids to enjoy, but don't dare watch it yourself unless you want to bang your head afterwards for wasting this much time.

A cracking film for all ages, but in particular for the youngsters, I think they'll love it. Lots of terrific magic tricks, a little bit of (mild) horror and a great Spooky House setting too. Ben Kingsley is excellent playing the part of the Great Zamboni, as is little Matt Weinberg as orphan Max. It's not just illusions and hocus pocus horror though, there's a nice heart warming story along with it. Definitely worth a look.

Just watched Spooky House on Sky Movies, and my daughter and I both enjoyed it. The magic element was good to watch, with sufficient mild horror to keep an 8-year old happy (and jumping), and the wonderful Ben Kingsley for her mum!

I actually found the dummies in the magician's house quite scary, having always been a little afraid of ventriloquists' dummies since I was a child.

Spooky House was actually more fun to watch than Disney's Haunted Mansion, as it didn't have all the inane plotting of that film. This was simple movie hokum that just leaves you feeling glad you watched it.

Watched this film tonight with my 10 and 13 year old boys. Took a little while to get into it but loved the children and the storyline. Had some great themes for kids with magic, bullies, family, halloween and an adorable orphan all combined to make an entertaining film. I especially liked that they had used a real black panther instead of some CGI effect (really hate how they've used a CGI cat in the new Witches film!). However, what could have been a really fantastic film was spoiled for me and the kids by the odd choice of jarring, mismatched music in places and the terrible slow mos and camera work. At one point they switched to an outside shot of the house about 5 times for no real reason (and this shot was the fakest looking thing in the whole movie!) Think this film would have really benefited from a talented director. At times, it came across very pantomimish. Nevertheless, the ending, though predictable, managed to bring a tear to my eye and, all in all, I would recommend it as an enjoyable family film.