Monster House

The second of the two "family films" that are in the category of "House as a character." This is a fun Halloween tale of the creepy old neighbor yelling at all the kids to get off his lawn. The film starts with a girl wandering too close to the sidewalk of the "Monster House" while riding her tricycle. The House doesn't take kindly to the intrusion and swallows the trike. Watching from a house across the street, a boy, and eventually his friend and another girl, begin their investigations to the disappearance of the trike, basketballs, and other toys from the neighborhood. This house is alive and can move, grab skateboards, people, pets, and anything violating its' space. The trio of children consult a local teenager, supposedly knowing about the way that a human and an object, like a house, can meld. He suggests destroying the heart of the house. Back at the house, after several warnings from the cranky owner of the house, he is taken to the hospital, after over exerting himself and the three kids explore the house. While inside they find years of lost toys. They also find a furnace named "Constance." When they escape, the old man has returned and then explains what happened with the house. Years in the past, he fell in love with a circus freak, a monstrous woman, and he frees her and they begin to build a house together. Unfortunately, some children are playing near the house while it is under construction and taunt the enormous woman. The children do not mean harm to her, but everyone else has poked fun at her due to her size. She gets upset and falls into the foundation of the house and is cemented in place! Returning to the present, the old man tries to console the house, Constance, but is enraged at the recent transgressions, and a climatic battle ensues. The children ignite a stick of dynamite and finally end the houses rampage by dropping the stick down the chimney. With Halloween night starting soon, the children and the old man return to the basement and begin distributing the toys that had been accumulated over several decades.
This is a fun little story that has some spooky moments, funny lines, and great animation of the humans, the world, and the Monster House. Similar to other movies that have been reviewed in this series, the house, in this case a former human, have been wronged and are now trying to control their lives by making everyone around them miserable. Unfortunately, some people are miserable, similar to this house, and there is very little that can be done, even with caring by the owner or friends and family looking for answers as to why they are not happy. For Constance, she is acting out because she had just been freed from the circus, beginning to live a normal life, when fate stepped in and again made her a prisoner of the house, an immobile object, for the most part. Since she tasted freedom, she wants to punish those around her for not being able to live her life as a free person. This interpretation seems correct, because most people that are cantankerous are that way for a reason, maybe someone near to their heart died young, maybe they were teased as a child, sometimes we will never know, regardless, this film shows the motivation of the house more clearly than the "Amityville Horror."