"Monster House" (2006) and The Trauma of Our Childhoods
Animation and Horror. For the Children. 🙃
Steven Spielberg’s Monster House is 16 years old and while the animation itself looks like something that an overeager grad student might peddle as an avant-garde independent study course, this movie SLAPS.
Hopefully you’ve seen this movie and receiving this newsletter is a fond, nostalgic memory to enjoy. However, if, like me, you were absolutely traumatized, bamboozled, and flummoxed by this movie as a child then you probably have less nostalgia and more nausea.
A proverbial can of worms that you casually ate, thinking it was just slimy, writhing beans that were slightly longer than you were used to.
This movie is dark and fucking terrible and marketed as a children’s movie because oh wow it’s animation and back then (and let’s be real, even now) people didn’t take animation seriously and it is really a medium for children.
If you’ve been here any amount of time, you know I know and WE ALL KNOW that that is complete and utter bollocks.
Animation as a medium is just as creative and valid as any of its live-action sisters. In as varied and interesting a family tree of cinema that animation lives in, each medium has its strengths and weaknesses, and to belittle one sibling over another is rude, uncalled for, and reveals two very important things:
You’re an asshole if you do that (not even metaphorically here, like in actual real life to children. Who does that?)
There is so much untapped potential.
Monster House appears like your standard Halloween movie, where the trio of protagonists is gonna Scooby-Doo their way out of their problems and have a fun little adventure while they’re at it.
They attempt to ride by on spooky, trick-or-treat vibes, but from the opening scene to every subsequent glance at this house, we are fed ominous music and creaking sound effects, the gulp of DJ (Mitchel Musso) every time he turns to see the house glowering at him and the darkness that emanates from it reminds us of the terror of the bogeyman and the monsters in the closet.
This is more than those languishing monsters we’re told as children. This house claws at us and tickles the part of our brain steeped in fear, dredging up night terrors and whisperings of guilt and hurt and fear and love.
This makes you feel so uncomfortable and it’s an animated movie tfor children.
To dismiss this as just another kid’s movie is blasphemy.
Just like Netflix’s The House, Monster House gives you an amazing visual plate to digest and then makes you feel sick for enjoying it.
Is this the scariest, goriest, most spine-chilling movie to grace the Halloween genre?
No. Of course not. But within its constraints. With the visuals and the story and the contained fear engine, this is one for the books.
And I highly recommend giving it a watch to really sink into those spooky vibes.
Our other popular ToP Substacks on animation you might like:
Heroines, Run The Show, Wotakoi, Esmerelda: Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss, Clean Freak Aoyama Kun!, Given, Little Witch Academia, Sk8 The Infinity, and Erased stored in our lil’ ole archives. There are also animated features thrown in there: The House, Encanto (which comes with a Podcast! Yummy!), The Summit of the Gods, andThe Hunchback of Notre Dame.