Step Inside the Monster House

There are many iconic structures in the neighborhood of horror: Norman Bates’ crooked Psycho structure, the Amityville Horror home’s eye-windows, and of course, the horrifying House of Wax. Writer-director Gil Kenan hopes that his Monster House, coming to a theater near you next year, will also leave a lasting impression and ring the (door)bells of horror fans of all ages.

Horror.com was part of a small group invited to visit the set at Sony Imageworks last week, where we got to see Monster House from the inside out — if not in reality, then in virtual reality on the computer and big screen. The animated feature follows three young friends — the very inquisitive DJ (voiced by Mitchel Musso), the Halloween-loving Chowder (voiced by Sam Lerner), and the object of their affection, Jenny (voiced by Spencer Locke) — as they risk life and limb to unlock the mysteries of an enigmatic house across the street.

The foreboding fortress across the way is owned by mean Old Man Nebbercracker (voiced by Steve Buscemi). “DJ is certain that there’s some strange doings in the house,” Kenan explained. “That’s the house we all know to stay away from, the place you try to avoid when you’re walking through the neighborhood. Old Man Nebbercracker makes terrorizing the children in the neighborhood an art form.”

The horror begins in earnest one day when Old Man Nebbercracker has such a fit finding DJ in his yard that he keels over, his corpse falling right on top of the boy. After that rather traumatic experience “DJ starts to find the house calling to him,” said Kenan. “It seems to be coming to life, taking on monstrous facets of its dead owner. The door becomes a mouth, the windows shatter and angle to give it a personification.

“This is why we decided that Monster House should be an animated film — the building is a living, expressive, emotive character.”

We got to see an early test of the “beast-house” which is a growling, undulating, sharp-toothed creature. “This is like a Muppet made of broken glass and shrapnel. And the thought of it being 4-storeys tall and giving chase through the streets is really horrifying,” said Kenan. We were also shown some very detailed, quite beautiful production art and storyboarding laying out the film in sequential order. “It was a real touchstone for the crew,” Kenan said of the storyboards. “That’s important when you’re doing something that’s not based on the world as we know it. The more artwork and images we could show to everyone, the better they had an idea of what I was after.”

Kenan has been at work on Monster House for almost two years now, and it’s his very first project right out of school. His student film caught the attention of an agent who knew Robert Zemeckis, who in turn thought Kenan would be a good fit with this script (which was later reworked and partially rewritten by the director). “I was totally shocked that I could get an agent. And then I was totally shocked that I could be sitting in a room with Robert Zemeckis. As you can imagine, I was insanely shocked when I got the call and found out that I got the job. I read the script on a Wednesday, made a bunch of drawings on Thursday, and met with Robert on Friday. That’s how fast it was.”

Zemeckis is an executive producer on the film, along with Steven Spielberg. “I’ve screened everything for them, at every turn,” said Kenan. “Their economy of filmmaking is so superlative, that a note can be simple and elegant, and show exactly the way [it should be done].

“It’s crazy. It’s enough to get your first movie made right out of school, and then to have producers be the two biggest filmmakers in the universe is unreal! The whole process so far has been so incredibly exciting to me.”

Judging from the trailer — “I just saw this 20 minutes ago myself, so you guys are basically the first people in the world to see it,” Kenan revealed — the movie looks like the perfect antidote to bland summer sunshine, what with its scary themes and being set around Halloween. The voiceover intones, “Every town has a legend… Every street has a story…. Every house has a secret…” and we’re introduced to DJ just as his parents are leaving for the weekend. “If anything happens,” his mom (voiced by Catherine O’Hara) says, “call the police and hide in your closet. Have fun with the sitter.” The sitter (voiced by Maggie Gyllenhaal) turns out to be anything but fun after she invites her sadistic heavy-metal boyfriend (voiced by Jason Lee) over and turns all her attention to him, leaving DJ and his friends at the mercy of the house across the street.

It was tricky, Kenan admitted, “making Monster House horror without being a parody of horror, and making it a comedy without losing the punch.”

I guess we’ll all see if he was able pull the trick off, come July of 2006. Be sure and visit the official Monster House website by clicking here.

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Staci Layne Wilson reporting